


The Infinite Possibility of Us

by Young_Rouge_Rose



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 x 2017, Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Chaptered, Existentialism, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Japhan, Love Confessions, M/M, Meta, Mild Smut, Mutual Pining, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Omniscient, Parenthood, Pastel Dan and Punk Phil, Post-Apocalypse, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Writer Dan - Freeform, but not too slow, like a mild simmer, lots of AUs, possible suicide trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-11-13 06:32:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11179053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Young_Rouge_Rose/pseuds/Young_Rouge_Rose
Summary: It began as all good stories do, with an inciting incident. Dan's just so happened to be almost getting hit by a car, watching a man die before his eyes and somehow falling into a web of alternate realities. Just your usual morning inconvenience. He just wanted a coffee, and to make Phil happy. Now all he wants is to get back home, back to his world, his life, his Phil. Little does he know Phil has found himself in a similar predicament, and what is stranger still is that in all other worlds they seem to be together. Maybe this is the universe trying to tell them something.





	1. Entry to a Maddened World

_**One world was not enough for two** _   
_**Like me and you.** _

_**\- Oscar Wilde** _

The world is a strange place. Dan supposed it always had been. It always would be. At least life liked to be consistent. Fair enough, he supposed, but this day had been the strangest on record.  The morning started with an almost comically horrific event. He had been texting and walking, a horribly bad idea for a six-foot-something man with bad coordination and reaction time.

The early morning London traffic was almost at a standstill. It always was at that time of the morning, nothing unusual. Dan didn’t bother looking before he crossed the street. He was going home. He just wanted to get home. He can’t even remember why he went out in the first place, probably because Phil asked. He remembers Phil asking him, now that he has time to stop and think about it. He wanted a coffee. Phil had always been a sucker for overpriced caffeine.

Dan was a sucker for Phil. No. Not in that way. ‘That way’ made it sound as though there was something more going on than what there was. They were friends, more than friends but less than anything else. They weren’t lovers. That is the basic gist of what Dan would define _it_ as.  People always suspected them to be more. Their _‘job’_ for a lack of a better term, was placing their lives out on the internet. People put two and two together and somehow managed to get to twenty-two.  Dan didn’t mind. Not really. Sometimes he wondered himself, there was a little nagging voice in the back of his mind which was jumping to conclusions as well. This voice oddly sounded like the slightly lower, slightly more annoying voice of his eighteen-year-old self. With a small shake of his head, he whipped these thoughts from his mind **.**

So, there was Dan, on his phone and juggling two coffees in one hand. He was about to cross the street without a second thought or glance. There was a man beside him on a bicycle who too showed no means of stopping. Dan figured the road was clear without looking up, his foot hovering over the lip of the pavement when one of the coffee lids just so happened to come loose, spewing out a mess of foam and coffee, down the front of Dan’s jeans.  It was just that type of day. After a few choice words and an awkward, middle of the walkway crotch rubbing he looked up as his ears filled with the shrill screech of a car jerking and the thud of impact. His nostrils burst with the scent of burning rubber and something metallic. It left a foul taste in his mouth. He looked up and realised it was blood.

The cyclist lay in a broken heap of flesh and bone. His body rested at an angle which Dan could only describe as innately wrong. When Dan was younger, his family lived on the fourth floor of a building complex. His mother would force him to be sociable and often arrange play dates with the girl two years his junior, five doors down. He hated her with all the white-hot fury a pacifistic seven-year-old could muster.  She always wore her hair in pigtails and lived with the creepy kind of porcelain doll, the kind which often served as the main antagonist in a horror film, attached to her hip. She had been over Dan’s house and was acting particularly annoying one evening and long story short, that doll ended up being flung from his window and landing four stories down on the pavement, all pinched and broken.

Dan hadn’t thought of that moment much since, but that was how he could best describe the cyclist.  A broken doll. If it weren’t for all the blood, Dan wasn’t sure it could be called a human at all. They were still alive though, still twitching. The driver was already out of his car, a slightly podgy middle-aged man with a balding head and a look of pure horror. He was already on the phone to what Dan supposed would be an ambulance. Others were quickly gathering around the scene. Dan wasn’t sure if they were trying to help or just trying to get a better view. Everyone had their phones out. Some were talking, likely also calling for help but others were taking photos. Dan realised this and felt sick. This was coming from someone who lived and breathed the internet. His life was all out there for a show, but this was twisted.

Dan dropped the other coffee when he stumbled backwards, his feet tripping him up. He corrected himself just before his head collided with the pavement.  Soon he was running in the direction of home. All traffic was at a standstill now.  He bolted the next few blocks until he was standing in front of his and Phil’s flat. Dan found himself almost falling face first on a sandwich board, which was placed precariously close to their front door advertising a record shop. Dan couldn’t remember it being there when he left this morning. It didn’t matter. He needed to get inside.

His hands were trembling so violently it was almost impossible to shove the key into the lock. After several failed attempts, he heard a familiar clicking sound and flung the door open.

“Phil?” He yelled upwards, alerting his roommate (and best friend) that he was home. The tone of his voice illustrating that something bad had just occurred. He didn’t know how to process what he had just seen.

Dan made his way up the stairs to the top floor of their flat still calling Phil’s name. He wasn’t sure how he got from the bottom of the steps to the top. It just happened. It was instantaneous. Maybe he hit his head because he seemed to be losing time. It was like a dream. He wasn’t sure how he was getting from point A to point B.

Dan and Phil had only moved into this flat several weeks prior and the two were still getting used to the layout. Sometimes Dan forgot they still didn’t live in their old flat but what he saw once he reached the top of the steps was neither a layout for their old flat nor their new one. Maybe he should rephrase. This was their new flat but nothing was the same. Instead of their lounge room, he was stepping into the doorway of a record shop, a slightly disorderly display of records and instruments were lining the room’s walls.

There were also a handful of people in their flat. All looking like they belonged on some spectrum between annoying, preppy hipster and punk. One face in the room was both familiar and foreign. Phil but not Phil. This Phil was standing by an open window at the far side of the room, head half out of it, a cigarette between his teeth. What in the ever-loving fuck?

For as long as Dan had known Phil he had never smoked. Not even once. His arms also bore a deep black trail of inky tattoos, which snaked all the way up to his neck and jaw. At this point, Dan was looking around for hidden cameras because this had to be a joke, a prank, something stupid for Youtube. Either that or he really did hit his head.

“Daniel?” This Phil’s brows knotted together in worry and it was such a strange sight. His expressions were the same as the Phil he knew.

“What’s wrong… what are you wearing? Did PJ say something again? I told you he doesn’t mean it and plus he’s stupid I like your clothes, for what it’s worth.”

Dan looked down at his clothes. Dan was wearing what he always wore. Black. Phil, on the other hand, looked like he might have raided Dan’s cupboard. There wasn’t an ounce of colour to his attire.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Dan breathed trying to make sense of this topsy-turvy world he had stumbled into.

“What I always wear… You okay?” Phil looked honest to God concerned and Dan felt himself mirroring that look because what the fuck was going on?

Phil snuffed out his cigarette on the windowsill, let it slide shut and crossed the room to Dan. The other people in the shop were now looking at the two in the way you watched someone without wanting them to know you were watching. Dan could see them looking at the two through the corners of their eyes. Phil placed a hand lightly on Dan’s shoulder and began to steer him into what was once Phil’s room, which now appeared to be a back-storage area.

“I will be back in a few,” He breathed over his shoulder to the others then shut the door behind them.

His blue eyes darted over Dan as if to see if there was any damage clear on the other boy. There didn’t appear to be because a furrow of concentration was beginning to bore craters into Phil’s skull.

“You were yelling when you got in, what happen, where were you?”

“I went out to get you some coffee remember? Almost stepped in front of a bloody car. I watched this guy on a bike get hit and I think I might have fallen over some time in the mean time because my head is killing me and nothing is making any sense.”

Dan hoped his words would clear the air between them, him and this strange Phil, not Phil. It only seemed to cause a more confused look to spread across not Phil’s face.

“I hate coffee. You know I hate coffee.”                                                                                     

There was no way in heaven or hell this could be Phil Lester. Phil Lester had a short list of things Dan knew he loved more than life itself. Coffee was on this list, along with cereal, Buffy and on the odd occasion, Dan. It wasn’t a romantic love. It was just, love. It was the twenty-first century. People should be able to accept there were different types of love besides romantic. Though sometimes Dan could practically see the lines blurring. So maybe the rest of the world was just as confused as he was.

“How do you feel about cereal?” Dan asked knowing he sounded mental.

“I’m more of a tea and toast guy, you know that.” Phil is looking at Dan like he may or may not be having a serious mental breakdown.

“What about Buffy?” Dan pushed.

“The telly show? It’s my favourite, you know that.”

So, some things were the same. God, Dan was confused. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he had fallen into some kind of parallel universe. The second thought was laughable.

“And me?” Dan question almost scared to ask for fear of the answer he might get.

“How do I feel about you?” Phil- not Phil, clarified. Dan simply nodded his head.

“I love you, you know that. I think you need to sit down though. Maybe you did hit your head. I heard this story about a guy who had a metal rod go through his skull and he sneezed out a teacup sized piece of his brain and it messed up his personality. Please tell me you aren’t going to start sneezing out internal organs.”

Dan was confused about every bit of Phil’s words because the first sounded far different from anything he was used to. Love. Sure, there had always been that type of emotion between them but it was never spoken aloud and the way Phil, not Phil, had spoken sounded anything but platonic. Dan felt himself go pale, his knees shaky. Phil guided him over to a box of records and instructed him to sit down on it while he brushed Dan’s curls from his eyes and began to look him over again for bumps and bruises.

“You love me?” Dan repeated, sounding like a child trying to learn words by babbling off ones he had already heard. His eyes transfixed on the Chinese dragon snaking its way up Phil’s neck and wrapping down around his clavicle.

“Yep,” Phil answered, holding up a finger and moving it, getting Dan’s eyes to follow.

“Since when?”

Phil reached over, taking Dan’s hands which were clasped tightly into a ball at his side and worked them open. Phil noticed that the boy’s hands were scraped and sighed placing a kiss to the palm of each. Dan’s heart was a thunderstorm. What. The. Fuck. He pulled his hands away waiting for Phil, not Phil’s answer.

“I don’t fucking know. Since ever.” Phil said 'fuck'. There was no way this was Phil.

Sure, Phil swore from time to time but it was mostly when he would fall over, or do something stupid and it was never to the extent of ‘fuck’. That was Dan’s job.

Dan placed his head down between his knees feeling as if he was about to have a panic attack. He had no clue what was going on or where he was, even _when_ he was. Phil’s hand is on his back and even if it’s not Phil, something about him is familiar enough that this gesture is comforting.

“I think I might puke,” Dan gasped feeling a cold sweat begin to pour over his skin.

The world was tilted. Everything was wrong. He inhaled, then exhaled. Over and over again, until his breathing was back to a somewhat normal state. Phil just stayed there, one hand on Dan’s back and the other on his knee. Dan didn’t know what to do. When the world was backwards, what else was there to do but roll with the punches?

He squared his shoulders, sat up a little straighter and set his jaw. He needed to get himself together.

“When I came in you asked if PJ had said something to me, why?”

That question was the least of his worries but at least he might learn a little more about the strange world he had stumbled into if he asked a slightly more simplistic question. He didn’t think that Phil would know how to answer if he asked how he got there, or what the hell was going on. That question was just far too big.

“He’s always talking shit about what you wear it’s… unconventional. Says it’s very, ‘un-punk’, which is one of the main reasons I like it. I mean- I like what I wear but I don’t want to date… what I wear.”

“That literally makes no sense,” Dan chuckled before his mind caught up to itself.

Phil said they were dating. Phil mother fucking Lester said they were mother fucking, fucking. Not in those exact words. Even the Phil that cursed was slightly more tactful than that. Still.

“We are dating?” Dan’s voice cracked as he gasped it out, his mind desperately trying to wrap around the concept. They were dating. No way. Dan was dreaming. They weren’t dating. He would never. They would never.

“What’s wrong with my clothes… how long have we…?” And another panic attack threatened to take him over.

“I think we should get you to bed, I’m pretty sure whatever happened you might have gotten a concussion or something,” Phil began.

Where was his bed? His room used to be where a record shop now resided. He just followed Phil, unsure as to where they were going. They travelled back down the stairs and walked into what in his world, would be their gaming room. It was now a bedroom, set out to hold a mixture of both his and Phil’s things. Dan was confused until he put two and two together, realising that they shared a room.

Dan let himself be guided to the bed and laid down there, looking up at the white roof since it was the only hint of normality this strange world held.

“I need to be by myself for a little bit, I think,” Dan whispered and was surprised to see a look of hurt on Phil’s face.

“Okay,” Was all he said before disappearing.

Dan was left alone. He took the opportunity to explore. He climbed up out of the bed and surveyed the room. He noticed some of his things, some of Phil’s. There was his box set of assorted DVDs and novels. There was Dan’s piano crammed into the corner of the room but there was a lot of things he didn’t remember. A box holding records which he couldn’t imagine himself or Phil sitting around listening to. It was a collection of varying genres consisting of Bring Me the Horizon, Motionless in White, Brand New, Blink 182, and even bloody Metallica. 

He moved over to his… their, cupboard. One side was filled with varying shades of monochrome while the other was a hundred shades of an opaque rainbow. On any other day, in any other world, he would have thought his side was the black and Phil’s the coloured but judging by the way this Phil looked, he guessed that wasn’t the case.

“Great,” Dan spoke aloud to the air.

He was stuck in a universe where he only seemed to wear pastel and he was fucking Phil _mother fucking_ Lester. On the bedside table, he noticed his phone. For a moment, this confused him. Hadn’t he just had it while he was out? How did it get there before he did?  Dan leant over and tapped the screen. The phone shot to life with a subtle luminescent glow. He froze once his eyes adjusted and his lock screen came into focus. It was him, or someone that could have been his twin (minus his shitty dress sense) and this punk version of Phil, arm in arm. Ever the romantic couple. Something in Dan’s heart stirred. What. The. Fuck?  He wondered if someone had slipped hallucinogens into his bloody overpriced coffee because this was impossible.

That’s where all the weirdness started. The coffee. He was getting Phil coffee. He watched someone get hit by a car. He almost got hit. This Phil didn’t like coffee. His Phil did. Things were beginning to fall into place and again the world tilted.

***

Dan had been gone for an hour. Phil was trying to reason with his mind that this was perfectly normal. On a good day, it took about ten minutes to walk to the coffee shop several blocks away, but maybe that day it wasn’t a good day. Maybe there was a long line. Maybe Dan decided to do something else as well while he was out. It still didn’t feel right. Phil knew Dan better than the back of his hand. If Dan had gotten side tracked he would have at least left Phil a text message, something. Anything.

He let out a quiet groan and stood, grabbing his coat. This was ridiculous, he told himself while he rushed out into the late morning hustle and bustle of London. The weather was particularly cold that morning, which made Phil even more concerned because Dan hadn’t taken a coat, which meant he hadn’t had the intent of staying out for any longer than necessary.

There was the familiar sound of an ambulance in the distance. It wasn’t a surprise. Even with his and Dan’s recent move, they had still managed to stumble upon a street with just as many ambient sirens as the last. Dan would always play games with Phil trying to guess what crime someone had committed and would always be disappointed when Phil would somehow manage to spin it into something positive, like someone having a baby. Who knows, maybe London just has a really high birth rate.

Phil always liked to chase silver linings. He did it more than most. Dan never did, so he did it enough for the both of them. That was who they were. They made up for what the other lacked, complimented one another. The yin to the yang. Phil was tossing up in his mind which of them was which. He was mulling it over when a shrill sound interrupted his thoughts.

This siren was different, it wasn’t getting louder or quieter. It wasn’t moving at all. Phil moved closer to investigate, finding an ambulance stopped at a cross section in the middle of the road. He pushed his way through the crowd of people to find himself staring wide-eyed at a crumpled figure lying on the ground in a heap of blood and black leather. He knew the figure better than he knew his own. He felt the world begin to slow down, a ringing filling his ears. Everyone around him sounded as though they were underwater, speaking in tongues. He felt the world stop spinning.

Dan. It was Dan. It couldn’t be. It was. It.

His mind couldn’t bring itself to be coherent. He took a step backwards and began running. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had run anywhere. His lungs were ablaze as his awkwardly long limbs pumped underneath him. He didn’t know where he was running to. He was shoving his was through bystanders, trying to place as much distance between him and the scene as humanly possible. A shaky sob replaced his gasping breaths. He felt as though he had just run head on into a wall as his shoulder collided with that of a passing businessman. It sent a shock through his body. His legs were flung out from under him and he felt himself coiled with the pavement in a near deafening thud. His teeth shook in his head and the world was swallowed in blackness.

***

Waking came soon after sleeping had befallen Phil. He sat bolt upright, finding himself in a bed he knew not to be his own. He had no clue where he was. His hands fumbled about for his glasses, hopeless without them. Amongst the blur, he could pinpoint some familiarities but there was nothing concrete. He noticed a few of his knickknacks scattered about the room. The rest of the room, however, was a mystery.

He found his glasses perched precariously on the bedside table.  Phil’s world slowly came into focus. He squinted in the early morning dim, waiting for his eyes to adjust. At that moment, he felt no pain, and for some reason, this seemed shocking. When had he gone to bed? He couldn’t remember.

The first thing that came into focus was a mop of messy, morning curls, peeking out from several thick layers of blankets. There was a body beside Phil. Dan. Dan was alive. Dan was alive and in his bed, or in this bed. Where were they? He didn’t care. Dan was alive. Had he been dreaming? Why were he and Dan sleeping together? Well not together, but separately… together. That didn’t sound any better. Phil knew he and Dan would never- not in that way. Sure, on the odd occasion the two of them would play a film on their laptops and watch it together in bed. Sometimes they would fall asleep in the same bed. Right now, this felt intimate.

Phil could feel the heat of Dan’s skin placed against his own, warm like a lazy summer morning. In such a dark room, he radiated like a sun. A slither of Dan’s pale golden skin peeked out from under the covers. Phil could see the scattering of light freckles on his left shoulder. He couldn’t believe in all their years of knowing one another he hadn’t noticed the constellation cluster dusting over Dan's skin. Phil’s mind kept jumping from one panicked thought to the next.

“I know you’re awake,” A muffled mumble can from under the covers.

“And that you are staring.”

Phil made an awkward choked sound, a mix between a scoff and a gasp, before pulling his friend into a tight hug. Maybe he had been dreaming, but it was one hell of a dream. Not even Phil could find a bright side to finding Dan dead. There was no possible bright side. He liked to think that he was the one constantly keeping Dan together, but he was as shaky on his own as Dan was. They needed to be together. They were two vines that had grown to entangle over the years, any attempt to sever them would kill them both.

Phil held Dan closer, burrowing his face into the nape of the boy’s neck. It was a new sensation, too intimate for friends, even for them. They believed that space was a word made up for other people. If they could place themselves anywhere in the world, Phil was sure they would situate themselves next to one another and as far away from the rest of the world as humanly possible. This felt like a natural progression, still, he expected Dan to pull back. Dan was always the one pulling back.

“I would hug you back, but you’ve kind of pinned my arms down,” Dan chuckled faintly. The oddest thing about this situation is that Dan didn’t seem to think it was weird at all.

“I had a really messed up dream,” Phil mumbled and pulled back, still looking the younger boy over as if he were about to disappear altogether.

Dan was now free to roll over his eyes meeting Phil’s. He raised a brow slightly and leant closer, a hand cupping Phil’s cheek. Phil inhaled a sharp breath through his teeth, stunned. This was not normal Dan behaviour.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Dan wondered aloud with such genuine gentleness Phil’s mind began to spin. He couldn’t think of a time Dan had spoken to him with this kind of voice. It was foreign territory.

Phil opened his mouth to speak and shut it again in confusion when the door to the bedroom sprung open, causing Phil’s eyes to swell wide resembling a deer in the headlights. He and Dan were the only people in their flat, so a door opening sets Phil on edge. Then again, he wasn’t even sure they were in their flat. Nothing looked right.

A creature came barging into the room, slamming into Phil’s chest, knocking him back down into the bed with such a jarring force it felt as though his teeth would rattle free from his mouth. It reminded him of something he couldn’t put his finger on. It was the ghost of a dream, forgotten on waking. His hands wildly flailed, gripping onto whatever had pinned his body down, his fingers knotted with fur.

It was a dog. There was a dog in his and Dan’s flat, but- this wasn’t there flat. What the hell was going on?

Phil managed to pry the energetic creature free from his frame and sat up again, panting slightly as his eyes came face to face with a small boy, standing in the doorway beyond the creature. Phil was thoroughly confused. Looking back at him was a child, wide dark brown eyes, and a thin, trembling top lip.

“What are you doing out of bed bud?” Dan had questioned, sitting up slightly as though this wasn’t the strangest sight which had occurred thus far this morning. Phil could count a lot of strange things that had gone on since he had woken up that morning.

“I had a nightmare,” a small voice escaped from the mystery child’s still shaking lips.

Dan shot Phil an apologetic look, sitting up and opening his arms slightly. Phil just watched, dumbstruck as the child scampered over and buried his small face into Dan’s chest. Phil was surprised that the sight made his chest swell. That’s when his head began to throb. He reached back, holding it, hissing out quietly at the phantom pain which resided there. Then he remembered. Dan had been dead, that couldn’t be a dream. It felt so much more like reality than this did. Maybe this was his dream. His brain’s way of coping. It was a pretty damn strange coping mechanism.

Maybe Phil’s brain was showing him what he wanted to see. Was this what he wanted to see? He would have imagined that his mind would take him back to a time where yesterday hadn’t happened, where Dan was still alive. Instead, it had placed him in a strange house, in bed with his best friend, with a dog and a small child. Was this a silver lining Phil hadn’t even realised he was chasing? It was possible. He was less surprised than he should have been.

“Papa had a nightmare too, you know? That’s what happens when you stay up late watching Buffy,” Dan shot Phil a pointed look and Phil threw up his hands as he was accused of a crime he couldn’t remember committing.

“Buffy never hurt anyone,” He insisted then realised what term Dan had used to describe him. Oh, God. He really was too far gone; dreaming, dying, something. There was no way this was happening.

‘He’s four Phil. Buffy is a little mature for a four-year-old.”

Dan had a point he supposed. Wow. Dan was the responsible one, who would have guessed? Phil shook his head again. He couldn’t let himself get stuck in this fantasy world. It wasn’t real. None of this could really be happening. Nothing made sense. Maybe he had gone mental. It felt entirely possible.

Phil quietly observed as the little boy’s hands snaked up into Dan’s slightly curling hair. The young boy’s hair was several shades darker than Dan’s maybe even darker than Phil’s, it hung straight and slightly too long, falling into his eyes. Dan seemed to read Phil’s thoughts and pushed the hair from the boy’s face.

“You need a haircut bud,” Dan breathed.

“Ninjas don’t get haircuts,” The boy quietly whispered,

“Papa said that ninjas don’t cut their hair,” Again Dan shot Phil a pointed look. He tried not to let off how out of place he was feeling. He tried to do his best to both be civil and keep up with the conversation.

“I didn’t say that. I’m sure ninjas cut their hair,” Dan’s mouth was shaping a ‘thank you’ until Phil continued.

“It was samurais who didn’t cut their hair.”

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Dan mouthed at Phil.

Phil could almost fall into thinking this world was true. This Dan was so much like the one he knew. If everything else wasn’t so strange he was sure he could live in this dreamland forever, but everything else kept jarring him from the scene. He didn’t belong here. He felt out of place. 

“Tell you what,” Dan began putting on his false cheerful tone, which he reserved for small children and Youtube videos.

“Since we are all awake, why don’t I make us some pancakes for breakfast? Papa can keep you entertained until then.”

Again, Phil looked like a deer in the headlights. He didn’t know how to look after kids. He didn’t have the first clue. At least Dan had a younger brother. Phil was being thrown in the deep end. A familiar twinge of anxiety seized his chest, but before it could settle in the child moved over into Phil’s lap and wrapped his little arms around his neck. Somehow this soothed him.

“Can I watch you play the donkey, monkey game?” Phil smiled despite himself.

If he were to have a kid one day, when he woke from this odd dream, then this would be what he would want them to be like. Maybe his subconscious knew more about Phil than he had realised.

“I suppose if it’s okay with…” He looked up at Dan, who was already nodding, Phil’s head still hurt and he didn’t know why.

“Daddy, can we?” The child pestered, his eyes swelling and looking to Dan.

“Fine with me,” Dan grumbled shoving the dog from their bed. He tried to make it seem as though he didn’t care about the creature, but Phil noticed him giving it an affectionate pat as he strolled into the hallway, smiling wider than Phil had seen in a long time. In his perfect world, of course, Dan would be happy. 

 

***

Phil found himself sitting on a worn-out sofa, in front of an old Super Nintendo game console with a small boy perched on his lap. He was surprised at how happy it made him feel. It wasn’t real. He reminded himself once more. This was just some odd dream state, a coping mechanism, something he had to escape from. Phil still had no idea where he was.

“Hey, bud?” Phil questioned softly, still not knowing the little boy’s name.

At first, the boy had been too transfixed on the game, Phil was playing that he hadn’t heard Phil speak, but after the characters on the screen stopped moving he looked up at Phil with curious eyes.

“Yeah?” He asked quietly.

“Do you know where we live?” The child tilted his head in a strange manner,

“In a house,” Phil was internally hitting himself for hoping to get a straight answer from a four-year-old figment of his imagination. Again, Mr Sunshine was struggling to find a silver lining. He supposed that even though this boy wasn’t real, a lot of Phil wanted him to be, he wanted everything in this world to be real, right down to the part where he woke up next to his best friend and that concerned him more than anything.

“I know that. I meant what town do we live in?” The boy furrowed his brow in thought like this was a very tough question for him to answer.

“Reading like red… like the colour.”

Phil paused but nodded his head. He had no clue why, he supposed it was close to where Dan grew up, but what happened to London or even Manchester for that matter?

“Why do we live here?” Phil couldn’t help but mutter aloud, continuing playing the video game so the boy could be somewhat entertained while Phil, for lack of a better word, interrogated him. He figured the small child would question his sanity a lot less than Dan would, though he wasn’t sure the person in the room over was really Dan at all. He was like the memory of someone, he looked like Dan and talked like Dan, but he felt like a ghost of the Dan Phil knew.

“Cause you and dad work here,” The boy supplied.

“What does Da- dad do?”

Phil figured if he rolled with the story his brain had created, then maybe it would be easier for him to get a concrete answer.

“He’s a lawyer, that means he gets to talk to icky people all day. He told me once they were t… tw-twazacks, then told me not to tell you he said it… what’s a twazack?” Phil rolled his eyes and remembered to keep that in mind to blackmail ‘figment’ Dan with the next time he questioned his parenting skills.

“A word dad shouldn’t say,” He supplied, which seemed to satisfy the boy enough.

Phil continued to play the game, every now and again slipping the controller into the boy’s smaller hands and showing him how he could jump over something or just move about the game. The boy wasn’t very good and didn’t much understand the objective, but he still smiled widely up at Phil so he let the kid continue. 

“Do you think the little monkey knows when it dies or does it just wake up in a barrel far away from the big monkey and just keeps playing because that’s what it’s meant to do?” The little boy asked, the question almost making Phil pause, the question seeming to hold more weight than the boy could ever know. It was just a silly question. Kids had the habit of asking silly questions adults didn’t even think of. This question, however, seemed to suddenly be very important. It caused the cogs in Phil’s brain to begin to turn.

“I don’t know bud,” He whispered, his voice suddenly sounding strangely strained.

“But I intend to find out.”


	2. The Fable of the Dragon

**_Well, the future spills its intangibles_ **   
**An unknown set of variables**   
**A path that split infinitely up ahead**   
**-Bright Eyes**

Dan felt numb. His mind twisting and turning in on itself searching for familiarity. His body had melded with the bed beneath him and he did nothing more than stare forward. He was losing track of time. Somewhere between discovering his phone and now, he had stripped from his coffee stained clothes and opted to raid the wardrobe. He found himself sliding on the other Phil’s clothes. His own were too foreign, nothing like what he would actually wear.

For the most part, the clothes fit well, slightly snug in some places, slightly loose in others. It looked like something he would wear, but it didn’t smell like him, nor the Phil he knew. The Phil he knew smelled of coffee, the instant kind, which never had the possibility to smell burnt nor bitter. His Phil always smelled sweet, fruity shampoo from morning till noon. They lived in such proximity to one another that Dan had come to know Phil’s smell.

This Phil, on the other hand, smelled of cigarette and a spicy cologne, which Dan didn’t recognise. Wearing these clothes reminded him of the first girl he kissed, she tasted like Phil smelled. An acid chemical mix and for a sixteen-year-old, she smoked like a beat generation poet. So did this Phil.

Dan couldn’t seem to find any familiar comforts. He longed for a home he wasn’t sure how he had left, though his mind was quickly trying to work that out too. Mentally searching all the compiled information stored within his brain from late night Wikipedia escapades. He was about to rise from the bed and force himself into action when the door slowly swung open. He met Phil’s eyes. They were wide, swollen to an almost comical size. That was a face Dan knew. Tucked behind Phil's back Dan caught a glimpse of something violently yellow, burning brilliantly, Dan knew what it was immediately and groaned internally.

“Daniel… You feeling better?” The other boy attempted, his voice slightly softer than what Dan was used to.

“Not really,” He didn’t see any need to lie. Whatever arse backwards world he was in, he would imagine every version of Phil knew him well enough to know when he was lying.

This Phil presented an obnoxiously large bouquet of oversized sunflowers, passing it over to Dan, who couldn't fight the urge to screw up his nose. God, what fucking world had he fallen into?

"Flowers?" Dan scoffed, noting a look of hurt flash over Phil's face.

"What's wrong? You love flowers. I even got the right kind, right? You like sunflowers right? I figured you needed a pick me up."

"I fucking hate sunflowers."

This Phil's mouth twitched, creating an unreadable expression. He gave Dan a once over, twice over. He then ran his fingers through his hair. Dan could see the cogs turning in his head, but struggled to make out what it all meant. This Phil wasn't as easy to read as his own. Finally, he spoke again.

“Your head still hurt or have we moved on to full blown existential crisis territory?”

Phil finally, climbed onto the bed beside Dan, taking the flowers back and placing them to one side. He smirked, which considering everything that had just happened, seemed odd. His Phil didn’t have a habit of smirking unless he was trying to hide something, normally formulating some kind of plan to prank Dan, yet hiding it by attempting to keep his face neutral. A crooked smirk was always the result. His lips shaped the question, ‘what?’ Before he felt Phil wrap his arms around him, and tug him down onto the bed. Oh. Dan let out a not too graceful huff. He supposed this Phil did have the same facial expressions then.

“What are you doing you idiot?” Dan gasped, trying to wriggle from Phil’s clumsy grasp.

“Getting your mind off whatever is bothering you,” Phil chuckled before letting Dan go.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” He pointed out as if it were uncommon, though not wholeheartedly strange.

“You should wear black more often,” Dan almost scoffed. That was something he had never once expected to hear from Phil Lester.

“So, what’s on your mind?” This Phil asked his head tipped slightly to one side to get a better look at Dan from where he was lying. Dan wished he could put into words what he thought without sounding completely out of his mind.

“Do you believe in other worlds?” Dan asked quietly, shifting his gaze up to look at the whitewashed roof. His Phil wouldn’t judge him for such an odd question but this one, he wasn’t so sure would do the same.

“Like alien other worlds or Marvel multiverse other worlds?” This Phil provided the perfect Phil Lester inquiry, it almost made Dan question if this was, his Phil but on looking back to the boy’s face, his inked skin, blue eyes rimmed with black liner Dan knew, this wasn’t the case.

“Marvel multiverse,” Dan supplied and Phil simply nodded, getting up out of the bed, holding up a finger indicating for Dan to wait.

Phil rummaged around his collection of albums and smirked ever so slightly as his hands seemed to lay on the right one. He held up one and smiled ever so slightly rushing about to place it on the record player before moving back to the space beside Dan.

“Bright Eyes is for existential conversations,” He informed, saying it like it was an inside joke Dan just didn’t understand.

Dan just lay there and listened to the slightly melodic folk-like music drifting in one ear and out the other. He couldn’t imagine his Phil listening to this, but then again, he also couldn’t imagine him hating it. This Phil was a lot more like Dan than his Phil was. Phil nudged his shoulder as if pushing him to continue.

“I was just thinking. What if you just woke up… or just walked into another world or... universe, whatever. Like one where everything’s different but the same, would other people even realise you weren’t you, and how would you get back?” He sounded fucking mental.

“I think, that if that happened I would just roll with it. How fun would it be to wake up in some place as far away from here as possible? I mean, if I could take you. Maybe we would end up in some place where world peace was a thing, and guys could hold hands in the streets and everyone wears eyeliner and listens to Fall Out Boy.”

Dan found himself smiling and shaking his head holding back a chuckle.  Phil could still make him smile, even if it wasn’t Phil, not really. Dan still couldn’t shake the pulling in his chest telling him to go, to get home. Phil was probably freaking the fuck out. He was meant to be back hours ago. Did time even apply?

“As far as how to get back,” Phil interrupted Dan’s thoughts.

“I would try backtracking, I mean, going back to where I was before I discovered I had somehow ended up in another universe… hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically,” Dan repeated, his mind still ticking over the other boy's words. Maybe that was a good idea, going back to the street corner. He didn’t know what it would do but he would fucking pray to the God he didn’t believe in if it would get him home.

Phil rolled to face Dan, looking him over for a palpable moment. Silence ensued. Dan felt his body locking in place, his teeth worrying away at his bottom lip.

“I have to-” Dan began to say, not altogether sure how he would finish. He didn’t get the time to finish. This Phil was already speaking,

“Or you could stay a bit,” There was something else behind his words Dan couldn’t pinpoint. It made him pause.

“It’s not every day you get to meet someone from another universe.”

Now, this other Phil had his attention. Dan found his brows furrowing together as his mind ran over Phil’s words again and again. He seemed oddly calm about the entire situation, then again, Phil was the type of person who odd things seemed to pursue. So, if anyone in any universe were to fall into another it would be likely they would stumble upon Phil Lester. Dan wondered if he had a magnet for the strange. His Phil could spend hours of time retelling all the strange people he had met over his short lifetime, more than Dan imagined the average person would meet in ten lifetimes. Dan had seen an above average amount of oddities just by living in close proximity to him.

“How did you-?” Dan began again but had no time to finish, this Phil seemed to know parts of Dan well enough to know what he was going to say next.

“Well, I didn’t until you’re face confirmed it just now. I thought you were acting weird ever since you came home this morning, but honestly, my money was on an impromptu capture and probing by some secret society, likely the Illuminati.”

This Phil didn’t even seem to be joking. He guessed that something even more innately ‘Phil’ than his consumption of coffee was his tendency to browse the weirder sides of the internet when his hands fell idle. 

“That, and the Dan I know doesn't have gauges. I was also tossing up the idea of you being some kind of evil twin, but I thought that might be pushing it.”

Dan just gawked at how open Phil was to just, as he had phrased it, roll with it. Phil Lester in any universe was an anomaly. Dan ran his fingers through his knotting hair from quiet frustration. He for one was freaking the hell out, while Phil- the other Phil, was totally and completely calm. How he remained so level-headed confounded Dan to no end.

“You are so fucking frustrating Phil Lester,” Was what inevitably escaped his lips.

That was a constant across all worlds, times, whatever, Dan’s world seemed to be tearing itself apart at the seams, Phil Lester somehow managed to be an infuriatingly frustrating voice of illogical reason. It was a contradiction, Dan knew that, but Phil Lester lived to surprise.

“And you, are completely and utterly calm with the fact that I’ve just admitted to stumbling in from another bloody universe,” Dan’s voice rose an octave as Phil’s shoulders shrugged.

“Freaking out about things is your job. I have about a million questions, but I wouldn’t exactly call that freaking out. Do we have a dog in your universe?”

Dan let out an audible groan at that. Of all the things to ask.

“No, we don’t.”

“Okay, well… let me guess. Are we in a metal band or something together? Because you wear black and there is no way in a million years Daniel… my one, the other one, would…Oh, or am I a skateboard guy? I fucking love the way they look, but I’ve never thought I could pull it off. Something tells me there is no world peace, holding hands, kumbaya in your world.”

Dan fought off an eye roll and instead found himself stifling a laugh at the mere insanity of the whole situation thus far. He took a moment to collect himself, taking a long and deep breath, fighting to keep his tone at a rational level.

“None of the above I’m afraid, but I would still really like to get back there.”

The other Phil gave a sympathetic nod at this, his brows drawing together for a moment before placing his head in his hands as if trying to draw up some thought.

“Well come on then,” He announced after a moment, standing and squaring his shoulders.

“We might as well try going back to where you were this morning. I would kind of like the other you back as well, no offence, you seem great but- you’re not… you.”

That much Dan understood. He wanted to get back to his Phil as soon as possible, this one was different, in a hundred different ways that Dan had noticed just this morning alone. He couldn’t live here, he didn’t even know when or where ‘here’ was. His head throbbed just to think about it. Some questions were too big to answer.

At first, he and this Phil walked in relative silence. It wasn’t comfortable like it normally was with Phil, but it wasn’t uncomfortable either, as it would be with anyone else. There was just an air of space between them that wasn’t usually there and palpable questions on both of their tongues that neither was quite willing to be the first to ask. Dan was the first to cave once they exited their flat and entered the brisk London air.

“What made you get into music in such a big way? You’re not- you aren’t really like that where I’m from.”

Phil smiled slightly, a kind of secret smile as though Dan, without knowing it had brought up his favourite topic. He couldn’t help but wonder if he and Phil were two puzzle pieces fated to fit. No matter how bent and misshapen this Phil was in comparison to the one Dan had grown with, they still managed to fall together in the oddest of ways.

“I was twelve, my older brother was meant to be babysitting me but he promised his friends that he would go with them to this heavy metal music festival in Manchester, so he took me with them and I just- I don’t know. There was just something about it. I stuck out like a sore thumb though because-”

“Oh god don’t tell me that’s when you died your hair ginger,” Dan interrupted, wondering if that was the moment their universes had split.

Dan had spent enough sleepless nights mindlessly inspecting physics Wikipedia pages, and knew just enough on the subject to figure that at one point, his Phil and this Phil had been the same person. This Phil was beaming widely back at him, cheeks a violet shade of scarlet.

“Of all the things to stay the same in your universe that time I was a ginger had to be one of them?”

They both laugh now, falling into familiar patterns. Dan’s shaking his head, running his fingers through his knotting curls out of habit, his clothes still smell like this Phil. He doesn’t mind as much anymore.

“I remember your brother telling me about that weekend when I went on a family holiday with you lot. He was proper pissed because he ended up staying home and looking after you instead of going and all his mates said it was a good gig.”

“Good?” Phil scoffed, shaking his head, smoothing down his fringe.

“Life changing.”

Dan managed to keep a straight face for a fraction of a second before his mask finally cracked and he burst out laughing. He could feel Phil’s shoulders shaking beside him as laughter rolled from him.

“Clearly,” Dan gasped out taking a left at the end of the road, trying to trace his previous pathway.

“Just imagine it though,” Phil began, still beaming.

“A little fucking freckled ginger, in the middle of a crowd of fucking twenty-year-olds watching these guys shredding on their guitars, all in black, and smoking cigarettes. They looked like Gods,” Awe still rang in Phil’s voice.

Dan pictured it for a moment and found himself smiling. It was an odd thought, that something so small could change Phil so much. He wondered what moment had changed for him, to make him become the person he did. Maybe he would never know.

“They don’t sound like gods to me. I hate smoking. My nan used to smoke a pack a day. I swear it’s why she died early,” Dan thought aloud, more as a statement than something that needed commenting on, but this Phil paused, his mouth shaping several words which didn’t fit before he seemed to find the right ones.

“That didn’t happen here. I don’t think. Your nan still comes up to London for your birthday and Christmas. She loves the shit out of you. You lived with her for a bit while you were in uni.”

Oh. Dan supposed maybe he found his own lynchpin. What a strange thing it was. How something so little could change him so much. His nan always did love sunflowers.  

“So, what are we like in your universe? You never told me.”  Phil asked, his hands plunging into the depths of his jacket pockets. Dan figured he was fumbling about with his lighter. More from habit opposed to a conscious action.

Dan almost questioned how much he should tell, though figured universe hopping and time travel were two separate beasts. He quietly hoped that telling this Phil wouldn’t end in some Back to the Future-esque scenario where he talked himself out of existence.

“I don’t know where to start,” Dan fumbles out a beginning. 

“We’re both Youtubers.” The other Phil screwed his nose up causing Dan to chuckle.

“Don’t tell me we do shitty tag videos,”

Dan’s mouth hung in a sideways smirk as he shook his head, feeling his side bump against this Phil’s as it always would when he and his own Phil walked together. Were they always this close? He supposed so. Personal space could get fucked. It was cold and this was nice.

“We invent shitty tag videos, well… you do. We just tell stories most of the time, make people laugh,” Dan tried to explain and Phil gave a slightly solemn nod, looking as though he wanted to ask more but then paused.

“We aren’t together in your world, are we?” Dan bit his lip then shook his head an awkward chuckle escaping his lips.

“How’d you guess?”                                                        

“You just seemed off. Whenever I touched you it seemed like you were surprised. It was off. I mean, more off than being from another universe, that’s so fucking weird. How aren’t we together?”

The last part seemed as though Phil were asking it to the air. Dan let it hang there, still palpable in his ears. Phil was more astounded by the fact that they weren’t together than the idea that Dan had somehow stumbled into another dimension and that was fucking weird in its own right. Dan decided it was best to hold off vocalising it.

“Don’t know,” Dan breathed awkwardly, still feeling as though he needed to answer.

“We’re friends, that’s it. Nothing more, just friends.”

The other Phil stopped walking so Dan was forced to look at him, cold London air had turned the tip of his nose a pale pink, and his exhalations ghosted from his lips like smoke. The dark liner beneath his eyes had smudge slightly on the one side. Dan had the sudden urge to fix it but stopped himself before he could begin. It was too freezing for idle conversation but Phil didn’t appear to be moving anytime soon.

“Have you ever even talked to me about it?”

Dan was two steps behind. He had no clue what Phil was on about.

“Have I ever talked to you about what?”

Phil’s hand jutted out between the two of them as if to demonstrate. Dan rolled his eyes and started walking again, knowing full well that if this was his Phil he would follow. To his surprise, this one didn’t. Dan cursed under his breath and stormed back, feet smacking the pavement with such force the sound echoed through the narrow street. He liked every part of his body to leak frustration, to match his own mind. Phil looked at him like he was a child who had just thrown themselves to the floor the second they hadn’t gotten their way. Dan supposed he was. But he would never admit that aloud.

“No, because there isn’t anything to talk about. We don’t have anything going on because there is nothing going on. I don’t know what the fuck happened between us here in topsy-turvy land but that’s not how we are,”

“How could you know that if we haven’t even talked about it?” This Phil questioned, eyes narrowing slightly.

Dan huffed out a puff of smoke before grabbing Phil’s wrist and giving it a rough tug, still, he didn’t move. Okay, Dan took it back. They didn’t work together. Two stubborn idiots would just butt heads and with no one to cave in, Dan was reminded of all the late-night nature documentaries he and Phil had watched over the years. They were two horned goats ramming into one another until one could no longer continue. He needed Phil to be the bigger man, or else he would have to be and that just wasn’t how they worked.   

Dan swallowed every last inch of his pride and let go of Phil’s wrist. He took a step back and tried to remind himself he was a twenty-six-year-old and for once was going to have to act like it. It was a rare occasion indeed. He hated it.

“We just aren’t like that okay? I don’t know what to tell you. I know we are together here but, I mean… There has never been anything like that between us, contrary to popular belief. You don’t…” Dan huffed from frustration and gestured between the two of them.

“And you do?” The other Phil questioned. Dan didn’t grace that with an answer. He simply rolled his eyes and uttered a,

“Fuck off,” It wasn’t an answer.

“This isn’t a thing. We are just friends who live together.” This Phil rolled his eyes at Dan, looking at him like he was a child, trying to explain something far beyond his comprehension. He hated being treated like a child. He knew Phil was older, but his Phil never treated him that way.

“How long have we lived together?”

“I don’t know… six… seven years?” Dan breathed not seeing his point.

“And when was the last time you or I were with someone?”

That tattooed fucker. Dan tried to think about it. He remembered about two New Year’s Eve’s ago he had snogged some girl at a party. It had felt wrong. Phil went and spent the next week at his parents’ house and Dan didn’t know why.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dan breathed out quietly, seeming to give the answer the other Phil was hoping for.

“I’ll keep walking with you,” This Phil offered.

“If, you promise you will at least try to talk to me about it. You aren’t going to get anywhere tap-dancing around the issue.”

Dan just wanted to get out of this eerie back street and back to his own world. He wanted to tell his own Phil about this weird and backwards world. Hopefully, as time passed he would think of this as just a dream. He hoped this was all a dream. Maybe it would make one really good story time video, though he guessed most people would think he was either joking or mental. So maybe this was just a story to tell Phil. He had quite a lot of those.

“Alright, fine. Come on then. I promise.” This Phil held his gaze for slightly longer than necessary before finally groaning and falling back into step with Dan.

He didn’t owe this Phil anything, it was easy to lie about a promise he had no intent to keep. He was almost sure this Phil could tell he was lying, but somehow he didn't call him out. Dan couldn’t explain to someone who saw him as a partner that they were never going to be that, Dan knew as much. He wasn’t stupid. If something was going to happen between them, it would have happened already. It hadn’t. It never would. Some things just weren’t meant to be. Dan didn’t want it to come to that anyway. He kept telling himself that so he wouldn’t get his hopes up. If he told himself something enough times, then maybe he would start to believe his own lies. That had been working so far.

They began walking again, quietly backtracking through streets Dan hardly recollected. He paused for a moment to gather his bearings, finding that they must have taken a wrong turn, they found themselves beneath an overpass, reeking of urine, acting as a burial ground for the corpses of dead rats and decaying rubbish. Dan was lost. He looked to Phil, who seemed equally lost.

“I think our worlds might have a different set-out.” This Phil bit his lip and shook his head.

“Bloody brilliant,” He muttered under his breath.

He pulled out his phone, trying to boot up a map. It was then Dan realised they weren’t alone. Lurking a few yards up was the usual suspects, the exact type of people you didn’t wish to run into in an area such as this. One hulking man, who would rival both Dan and Phil’s six-foot-something height and stood twice the width, all bulk and muscle. Another handful of men appeared to be chatting, slurring accents, illuminated by cigarettes and lighters. A sinister bunch Dan’s body immediately reacted to.

“Hey,” He mumbled under his breath, trying to catch Phil’s attention without drawing attention to them. It had the opposite effect. 

Phil looked up, but so did the others. Dan felt as though cold water had just been dumped over his head. There was nothing innately threatening about that moment, but his body seemed to know better. Some kind of extra sense burned within his veins, urging him to flee.

“The fuck you looking at mate?” A voice boomed, deep and rough.

All the faces blurred together. Dan couldn’t tell which of the men had spoken. His eyes met the other Phil’s who seemed to be standing his ground. Dan looked at him as if he had lost his mind. His hand jutted out, grasping onto Phil’s wrist tightly, giving it a little tug as if to urge him to follow. Dan could see the vein in his neck begin to twitch beneath the blackened ink of the dragon tattoo.

“Phil…” Dan’s voice wavered in warning, this was bad. Very bad.

“You heard him. Fuck off fagots,” Another voice jeered.

“What the fuck did you say?” Phil’s voice cut in and Dan knew, something deep within his mind just knew. They had gone past the point of no return.

“Let it go,” Dan warned under his breath.

It was just a group of uneducated idiots throwing around words they had no clue the meaning of, just to get a reaction. Dan would be lying if he said it didn't hurt. The mere word drew out a visceral reaction within him. He began to gnaw at the inside of his cheek to hold back his own retort. Dan gave another tug on Phil’s wrist because letting any version of Phil in any universe get hurt was not going to happen on his watch.

The men were now moving, closing in like sharks in a feeding frenzy. He knew he and Phil were swimming neck deep in bloody water and were trying desperately not to drown. There was no way this would end well.

He shut his eyes, preparing for hell to break loose on earth. With the closing of his eyes, the earth fell away. All noise was swallowed into oblivion and Dan dare not open his eyes to horrified of what scene he would witness.

When his eyes did, inevitably open again his heart sank and his head throbbed in confusion. Phil was nowhere in sight. Neither were the men, nor the street.

He was standing on a train platform, still wearing the other Phil’s clothes. Everything that he had known to be real and true only moments ago had fallen away and now he was somewhere completely new. He looked beside him, hoping Phil would still be there, even if it was the other one. He was nowhere in sight. Not at first. Then he caught a glimpse of a familiar face, one that he hadn’t seen in more years than he could count on one hand.

It was Phil. But not Phil. Both more and less Phil than the last one. This was a Phil he had known many years ago. A younger Phil. In that moment, Dan also realised where he was standing, the Manchester train station.

Just when he thought things couldn’t get any stranger the ghost of his past had sprung loose from its cage and had presented itself to Dan. With wide eyes, he stared in awe.


	3. The Frying Pan

**_In some other life, we are standing side by side and laughing that, in some other life_ **   
**We are apart.**   
**-David Jones**

Breakfast. Conversation. Domestic bliss.

It felt wrong and it felt right. Phil Lester wasn’t sure how. This morning was so far from normal. Yet it wasn’t. He had just managed to fumble his way through a conversation with Dan and the small boy, that had now made himself at home in Phil's lap, picking at scraps of pancakes, sticky syrup running down the child's chin making for a not too pretty, though slightly amusing, sight. Dan kept bouncing his leg, looking down at his phone then back to Phil. Dan had gotten dressed after finishing with his own breakfast, into a dress shirt and tie, wrapped tight around his neck like a noose. He kept fidgeting with it. Phil wasn't used to seeing him dressed this way, whenever they hosted awards shows or attended dinners where a suit was needed Dan would always add a hint of himself to his attire. Today he looked like any other business man.  Phil assumed the younger boy must have work, since in this weird universe he seemed to have decided to go through with law school, and had an actual job.

“I’ve gotta go,” Dan managed, seeming to hold out as long as physically possible before he was in danger of being late. That was typical Dan behaviour.

Phil’s head was elsewhere. He was still running over everything that was going on before him, as well as thinking about the conversation he had with the small child. He looked up from his plate, realising a little too late that he had been staring. He looked at Dan to reply, only managing to let out a gasp as he felt a set of lips press against his own. It was a peck. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a parting goodbye. It still left Phil speechless.

He had never- sure, maybe when he was in university but it never meant anything. He had kissed guys on a dare, or on the odd occasion it was done out of pure curiosity but it hadn't really swayed him either way. Kissing a boy, who meant nothing to him was just the same as kissing a girl who meant nothing to him. It was fine but it wasn't kissing Dan. But this wasn’t Dan. Not his Dan. His lips felt unfaithful in a way Phil couldn’t describe.

“I’ll be back for lunch, yeah? Don’t forget to feed the overgrown rat. The dog I mean… not the kid.”

The little boy in his lap let out a gasp of disdain and pulled a face. Phil was still too shocked to speak. All the nerves on his lips tingled and suddenly he seemed hyperaware of the taste on the inside of his mouth. He felt like a teenager. The little boy pulled a face at Dan, who walked over kissing the top of his head, ruffling the boy’s hair.

“You’re mean. Papa’s my new favourite,” He insisted snuggling closer into Phil’s chest.

Dan playfully swatted away the dog from his feet and shook his head. Phil felt as though he should be speaking, he just didn’t know how. After the initial shock of the kiss, Dan’s lips acted as novocaine. Phil wasn’t sure he could feel anything at all.

“Papa was your favourite yesterday, sharing is caring bud,” Dan offered rummaging about in his pockets for his keys, finally at finding them he offered Phil a mock salute and Phil found his tongue.

“Wait. What am I meant to do?” He didn’t mean to sound so clueless, but his words were coming up in a clueless stream of consciousness.    

“What you have been doing for the past two years,” Dan chuckled with a little shake of his head looking Phil over, his face showing a perplexing array of emotions. Phil knew it to be Dan’s thinking face. Phil was doing a lot of that himself.

“Just get James cleaned up after breakfast, then… whatever. Make sure he has a nap before lunch, yeah? We will talk more when I get home.”

Dan knew something was wrong. His face screamed that he knew, yet his mouth conveys none of this. Unlike usual he didn’t push for Phil to speak. Instead, he pushed it aside for later. It was out of character. Phil supposed Dan pushing could lead to an argument, not that it happened often, but they were human. Things happened.

Phil remembered where he had seen that face before. It hadn’t been on Dan’s face. It seemed strange there. He did, however, recollect seeing it on his mother or his father’s face when he was younger. When his dad would spend too much time outside on his art projects, or his mother looked particularly tired. He hadn’t realised what those looks meant at the time. He had been too young to understand. His parents didn’t want to fight, nor speak about being worried about one another in front of Phil and his brother. Dan was doing the same thing.

“James?” Phil echoed stupidly, looking down at the boy in his lap, again taking the time to brush the hair from the child’s face. Again, Dan looked disconcerted.

“Yeah. He got your last name and my middle name. Fair’s fair.”

Phil nodded dumbly offering Dan a small wave as the boy began to hurry out. He kept looking back then sighed, rushing out the door. The small boy Phil now knew to be James looked up at him with wide eyes, syrup and sticky chunks of pancakes' remains covered his face and hands. Were kids always this sticky? Phil was in over his head and he needed to get back to his Dan.

“Bath time?” Phil uttered slightly unsure of himself.

 

The boy simply nodded and wrapped his hands around Phil’s neck. Now he was sticky. Great. He walked about the house in disarray, checking every door for the bathroom. The boy simply waited, humming quietly.

“Where’s the bathroom again?” Phil uttered aloud, figuring it would be a lot quicker just to ask.

“Upstairs,” The child offered simply.

Phil clambered up the stairs, fumbling to open the bathroom door while holding the boy tightly. He was clumsy at the best of times but this was just a recipe for disaster.

“You're funny today,” James noted as Phil set him down to run the bath.

He was quietly giving himself a pep talk, trying to calm himself down and convince himself that just because he had the habit of killing house plants, didn’t mean he couldn’t handle looking after a living breathing, small and danger prone human. He began running a bath, shoving his hand under the flow several dozen times trying to get it to the right temperature. He only knew to do this because he had seen his friend Louise do it several times with her own daughter. He overwatered his plants, how the hell was he going to manage not to drown a child?

James’ attention was taken up by a set of bath toys in the corner so Phil had a few moments to collect himself. He had seen his best friend die. Then… everything went black. He woke up in a house with his dead friend, who he apparently shared a child with. Yeah, that was normal.

Bright side: he was still looking for one. Dan wasn’t dead here. Dan kissed him. Was that a bright side? It kind of felt as though it was. That raised a whole other plethora of issues. This Dan kissed him and Phil couldn’t help but think, no matter how strange it was he didn’t hate it. If it was his Dan, maybe he would have kissed back. Shit. That was something.

“There needs to be bubbles,” James interjected sending Phil’s train of thought to a crashing stop.

“Oh right, sorry bud,” He managed.

While Phil made himself busy adding the bubbles and getting the boys out of his sticky pyjamas and into the tub. It was going fine. No drowning thus far.

“What if I told you I wasn’t your papa?” Phil asked quietly, feeling like he needed someone to talk through the oddities of the day and Dan would probably just call him insane. Phil had always been the more open minded of the two.  

The boy looked up his hands busy making mountains out of the foaming heap of bubbles. He tilted his head to one side in confusion before laughing, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly in the action.

“I know that already,” Phil looked at him perplexed.

“Dad already told me I’m adopted. Duh.”

Phil found himself laughing at this, letting out a surprised chuckle before shaking his head. He was having a conversation with his child from another universe or maybe from a dream. Well, bright side, if he ever got back home, this would be one hell of a story to tell. He just hoped when he got back his Dan would be there to hear it.

“Right, I don’t mean in that way,” He chuckled, sitting down beside the tub, watching the boy’s dark eyes follow his movements.

“Are you an alien?” He asked curiously, leaning over to poke Phil’s cheek.

“Or a lizard person?” Phil let out another throaty cackle.

“Who told you about lizard people?”

“You. Dad said that was silly like the Lock Ness monster.”

Phil pulled an offended face and faked a gasp, finding himself smiling as the boy burst out into a fit of giggles. Maybe he wasn’t too bad at this after all. Bright side, he no longer had a phobia of looking after kids. It wasn’t as if he didn’t like them, on the contrary. He found that kids were a lot better to talk to than adults most of the time. They weren’t so critical and to them the world still held wonder.

“I know the Lock Ness monster is real. Timmy from day care saw it.”

Phil smiled faintly and nodded attentively, listening to the child speak.  He quietly helped the boy in washing his hair- somehow, surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, it was sticky. Phil didn’t want to ponder that for too long.

“I’m not an alien or a lizard person, cross my heart.” Phil intern made the gesture of crossing his heart and held up a hand in an oath.

“I don’t know really. You see, where I come from… your dad and I- we live in London and dad doesn’t have a bad job, he really likes his job but we don’t have a proper adult job and… we haven’t found you yet.”

Phil’s own words rang in his ears as he tried to process them.  Having to think of Dan as anyone’s ‘dad’ was strange enough, let alone him saying he hadn’t found James yet. It almost felt like a silent promise. If he were to get back home. If he woke up and this was all a dream, or if he stumbled back into his own universe, then maybe James would be there too and Phil felt as though he had just promised to find him. If Phil Lester made a promise, he kept it. That was a worry for later.

“So, it’s like when Superboy punched the universe wrong?” Phil tilted his head to the one side trying to recall the story.

“Dad read it to me. I remember. Superboy could see the other universes and he got mad for some reason… really, really mad and he punched the whole universe because he was so made and everything went wrong. Maybe you did something to punch the universe,”

Phil looked the small child over with quiet consideration. It seemed about as sensible as any scenario his head could come up with, meaning to say it made no sense at all. The only thing Phil had to go off was nonsense. 

“My favourite colour is blue and my favourite animal is a c-capy…,” The boy offered, looking Phil in the eyes as if this is very important.

“Capybara?” Phil offered quietly and the boy smiled widely nodding.

“So you can tell me when you find me, so I can know it’s you and you can know it’s me.”

Phil could laugh at the small child’s logic, but he didn’t. Instead, he treated this little bit of information as if it were as precious as the small child thought it to be. He repeated the words over several times as if trying to memorise it. He didn’t have to though. He already had it.

“How could I ever forget you bud?” He questioned his own voice coming out soft. It was a type of kindness he didn't even know he could muster.

He grabbed a towel and pulled the boy's small frame from the tub, wrapping him in a mass of fluffy white cloth. He was no longer sticky. Another momentary bright side.

Phil took a deep breath, took in the moment. Beams of sunlight danced across the room, the mid-morning sun giving the room a warm hue. The small child within his arms, with the dark eyes and the too long hair, his skin a slightly sun kissed tan. He didn't particularly look like Dan or Phil, but that didn't matter. Just talking to him, Phil knew he was theirs. On the other side of the door, Phil could hear the dog, panting. Everything seemed to be almost too perfect.

 Phil tried to make logic from it. Dan was the one who focused on logic, hard reason. Phil believed in ghosts, aliens, monsters, and most of all himself. Some days he didn’t feel as though this were the cause, like he had forgotten the last part of his own formula but in that moment, he remembered that he believed in himself. He could get himself out of this and if not, maybe Dan, his Dan could because Phil also believed in him. He believed in Dan enough for the both of them.

He took James to his room, dressing him and inspecting the room. There was a photo balanced high on the boy’s dresser. It was a photo, someone’s birthday- Dan’s he supposed since the cake read, ‘Happy 28th Birthday’. Both Dan and Phil’s family were there and a very small James. Phil smiled at the image, he supposed they were a little ahead of time here, either that or his dream had its flaws. If he was dreaming, how would he wake himself up? Did he want to wake up if Dan wouldn’t be there?

He shook this thought from his head and looked the boy over once more. He was trying to work out what to do when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He furrowed his brow and held his breath as he opened his phone. The name sent his heart pounding, Dan. He tried not to get his hopes up, knowing full well it was going to be the other Dan, maybe he had left something at home he needed for work. The true message surprised him.

_Phil, I don’t think you’re going to get this. I know you aren’t going to get this. I’ve had the weirdest morning of my life. I wanted to talk to you. The real you. That makes no sense, right? It has been a crazy morning. I want to tell you about it. If I can. Fuck, it’s strange. Going to be a little late coming home but I’m working on it, Dan._

Phil had to be dreaming, his fingers quickly bashed away at the screen of his own phone, looking up every now and again, noticing the boy was playing with his array of action figures, stuffed toys and dolls. ‘Because screw gender roles’ he could imagine Dan saying because it was just a very Dan thing to say.

_Dan! I bet it was nowhere near as strange as my morning. I’m out too but I’m working on getting home too. It sounds weird but I miss you. Wish I could tell you about everything that was happening on my end but you’ll think I’m crazy. Maybe we are going through the same crazy. I don’t even know how to put it into words. I’ll be seeing you soon, right?_

Phil sent his own message and waited with baited breath for a response. He waited and waited, entertaining the child with his games, hoping to get some kind of reply. He had gone around the bend. Now he was sure of that. Dan wasn’t- he couldn’t be alive and texting. Phil looked at the time, realising Dan would be back soon and took a deep breath, settling James down for a nap, he huddled the boy under the covers, tucking several toys down with him.

“Are you leaving now?” James asked with curious, wide eyes.

“If I can bud,” Phil answered truthfully, again brushing the hair from his face. The boy’s small arms shot out causing Phil’s heart to swell.

He leant down holding the small child tightly and sighed. He smelled of soap and Dan. Phil had no clue how but he did. It made Phil smile, a foreign kind of home.

“I promise I’ll find you when I get back bud.” He shot Phil a wide smile.

“Go punch the universe papa.”

***

Phil Lester had been staring out the open window for the better half of fifteen minutes, gathering up the courage to jump. The thought in itself sounded mental. He knew that under any normal and logical circumstance this thought wouldn’t have even crossed his mind, but this was not normal. Phil had three options of explaining this weird and strange set of circumstances.

One: he was dreaming and like all dreamers, he needed to wake up. He had watched Inception and woke himself from nightmares enough to know that all it took was a kick. Falling from a second story window should do the trick.

Two: he had fallen into some kind of ‘other’ universe or some warped timeline. Again, his best way of kicking the universe would be to do something totally unexpected. It was like shaking a bottle of soft drink, disturbing something just enough for it to explode. He again had concluded that this was an adequate way to upset the system, to tip the scale. 

Three: Maybe he was already dead or in a coma. This option only occurred because the last fractions of the ‘real’ world he could remember had been cut to black with him falling backwards onto the pavement. He had awoken before he even had time to feel pain. So, if he was already dead this second death wouldn’t matter.

That was how Phil Lester came up with the obvious solution to getting himself back to the real world, throwing himself out a window. Thinking you were going to do something, and doing it, seemed to be two different beasts because Phil couldn’t bring himself to uproot his feet from their place on the windowsill. He kept thinking, kept doubting. His logic was screaming for him to step back from the window while the tips of his shoes already teetered over the edge of oblivion. His mind was made up. There was no turning back now. 

Phil Lester took a deep breath, then another and another. He would never be readier than he was in that moment. His fingers near carved nail marks into the wooden window frame as his body fought what his mind was willing him to do.  He used this as leverage, at first leaning back into the house, one foot staggering backwards with relief before his whole body tense and he sent himself flinging forward in a flurry of anxiety and silent terror.

The stomach-dropping sensation of falling had just begun to rise, his chest throbbing, setting his heart into a thundering beat of applause when, as quickly as the sensation had come, it disappeared. He opened his eyes, his body jerking upwards as all sound leaked from the world. He was almost in utter darkness, standing in what he first thought was the blackened abyss of dreamless sleep or death.  His eyes took time to adjust.

He was standing in a tunnel. He only knew this because of a sudden surge of illumination plummeting forth from the black. Headlights. Train headlight. They didn’t have time to reach him. The world came crumbling down in a sea of dust and a flurried symphony of shattering glass and crumbling metal.

Phil shut his eyes, and the world was gone again.

***

Out of the quietness of nothing arose sound. At first, it was the rustling of sheets, followed by the faded and fractured mumblings of a radio. It was odd, to say the least. Still not home. Phil opened his eyes and in this new world, there was a bed and there was Dan. He sensed a trend. It was much more like the one he had woken up in before. It still didn’t feel right. Dan rolled over looking to Phil, his eyes swelling wide, mouth hanging agape. The look on his face was an odd cocktail of knowing and surprise, of longing and of resolution.

Without another word, Phil was being pulled from the bed in a jerky motion, Dan yanking at his arm leading him from the bedroom into the corridor. Again, they were in a house Phil had no recognition of. The radio blathered on in the background, a third presence in the oddly quiet room.

"There have been sightings of Breathers outside the Western Square," A formal tone informed over the radio.

"They disappeared yesterday, mid-morning and are yet to be spotted within the city walls,"

“You can’t be here,” Dan’s voice cracked, adding to the long list of things which had surprised Phil that day.

“Phil, you can’t be here right now. Fuck, what if someone sees you here? Fuck. You can’t…”

At this point, Dan had dragged Phil to the front door, his grip still vicelike on Phil’s arm. He was fidgeting with several large deadbolts on his front door, then burying his free hand into the depths of his pocket supplying a set of keys. After several moments of fidgeting with the overly complex security, Dan flung open the door and shoved Phil out of it.

“She'll be home soon, you have to leave.” His voice sounded through gritted teeth.

“Take the back way, okay? There is a blind spot in the cameras, and they only patrol the place on the half hour so you should be safe.”

All of Phil’s hope that he would find himself back in his world crumbled. Out of the frying pan and into the oven. He had just stumbled further down this crazy rabbit hole and he was sure he wasn’t going to love Wonderland.


	4. Then and Now: Revelations

**_Hey, old friend._ **  
**What do you say, old friend?**  
**Make it okay, old friend,**  
**Give an old friendship a break**  
**Why so grim? We’re going on forever**  
**You, me, him-**  
**Too many lives are at stake…**  
**-Stephen Sondheim**

Daniel Howell stood at the Manchester train station for the second time, looking in awe at a familiar figure only yards away from him. Dan had idolised this long haired, scrawny, young adult to no end and seeing the figure now, only made Dan smile. This person, on this day, paved the way for the moment when his dreams and his reality had somehow fallen into something one and the same.

He knew later they would divulge again, as he dreamed bigger, longer for more but this moment had set him on the path, put out the possibility that life could be bigger. He could be more than a lawyer or a student. He wasn’t odd, he didn’t need to change who he was, grow yes but in a way that he was still himself. For all his new dreaming, his first dream, Phil Lester, would always be included.

Phil had been a Youtuber, while Dan was just another young kid with an internet cable, way too much time on his hands and an affinity for boys with too long fringes and a laugh that could only be described as joy itself, personified.

For some reason, which a younger Dan couldn’t fathom, Phil had wanted to meet Dan as much as Dan had wanted to meet him. Phil had found Dan equally as fascinating, equally as funny. Up until now, the present Dan had almost forgotten what it was like to be in awe of just having the pleasure to speak with Phil. He supposed the magic wore off some time in the seven odd years of living at one another’s hip. They had become a two-headed hydra within their time together, two minds but one collective something, that Dan still couldn’t fathom.

When Dan had first met Phil, and for many months that followed, Dan had thought of Phil as he would a falling star. Every moment he got with the boy was awe inspiring and amazing, but now after so much time together Dan realised Phil was his sun. He expected the boy to be there every morning, so he was no longer looking at him as if he were something that would disappear at any moment, instead he looked at Phil as a constant. The sun would always rise. Phil Lester would always be there by his side. Even in the times, they weren’t together, Dan knew he would come back.

Fuck. Dan had been so gone for the boy before him, the younger Phil. He didn’t even know how to describe the way he had felt at the time and it was only now that Dan was beginning to realise, these feelings never went away. They just festered under the surface, this indescribable warmness that Dan could scarcely put into words but felt almost constantly. It was warm coffee on a cold winter morning, it was the smell of the rain, the feeling of a duvet cocoon of comfort. It was this indescribable comfort. 

Dan was shaken from his internal questioning as a train arrived at the station, loud and commanding his attention. He remembered this train. He was on this train, or at least he had been. He watched as Phil surged forward, looking slightly too enthused, pushing through the large crowd exiting the train and flooding the station. He looked just as nervous as Dan remembered feeling. How had he never noticed that?

Dan was moving with Phil, not sure why. He felt an invisible tug, something telling him to follow this younger version of his best friend. He was fighting against the current of people. His height was his saving grace, he was only elbowed in the sides, every now and again a head would forcefully come into contact with his shoulder. Someone smaller would be near trampled. No one with any common sense goes against the flow of Manchester traffic. Dan waited intently, waiting to see a younger version of himself emerge. He didn't.

Dan watched everyone flood onto the platform, passing Phil. Had Dan being there, in this world, at this time, somehow affected the way in which this life played out or was this just how this world played out? From what Dan remembered of alternate universes, for every decision made, a world existed where the other had been chosen. Could there be a world where Dan wouldn’t choose to meet Phil? He had been so nervous to disappoint Phil, like somehow by him just showing up, Phil would realise that whatever connection they had previously shared, all the online conversations, had just been Dan talking himself up, making himself sound more interesting, or maybe that all the times they had Skyped Phil had gotten a different interpretation of what Dan looked like (to be fair he did have a pretty shit webcam) and when he finally saw him in real life, he would realise Dan wasn’t the person he thought he was.

Dan had never been one for pushing his comfort zone. Showing up that day in Manchester had been one of the most daring things he had done in his lifetime. Sure, now he was pushing himself out of his comfort zone daily for hundreds of thousands of people to see but that had all come after Phil. This Dan, in this life, at this time, was still a scared teenager. Not meeting Phil would be the biggest mistake Dan could ever make. He didn’t need to see any other universe to know that.

Without thinking, Dan pushed himself further through the crowd. He needed to make things right, coming face to face with a younger, wide-eyed Phil Lester. He hadn’t thought things through. He wasn’t the type to know what to do. That was Phil’s job. Dan just fumbled through life. He supposed he would have to learn to think on his feet. 

 “Are you waiting for someone?” Dan’s voice cut through the space between them, he watched Phil’s face light up, furrow in confusion, then drop.

“Yeah, I was. You remind me a lot of him actually,” Phil’s eyes kept dragging over Dan as if trying to work him out. Maybe he thought Dan was catfishing him. He had to think of something quick.

“Yeah? Can’t say I’m here to meet you. I was here to pick up a friend but they missed the train. I saw you looking and I figured the same thing happened. Kindred spirits and all that shit,”

Phil’s face fell as if he had been hoping that Dan, even though he was far older than he had claimed to be, was still the person he had been Skype calling, and talking to for the better half of several months.

“I think I got ditched,” This Phil muttered, kicking at nothing, almost managing to trip himself up in the action. Same old Phil.

“Fuck them. Whoever it is, they are stupid. You seem like a nice guy. Only an idiot would ditch you,” Phil was giving Dan the look he had several times seen Phil give the odd strangers he encountered. Dan supposed in this world, that’s who he was but in no world, was he letting Phil be sad.

“Who was it anyway?” Dan asked it like he didn’t know. Phil’s shoulders heaved and he shook his head.

“I guy I met on the internet. I guess there is a reason they have all those adverts warning you about it but I was figuring I was either going to meet him or some balding eighty-year-old alien cat-lady but I just got stood up.”

“Like an alien with lots of cats or an alien who is half cat, half lady?” Dan couldn’t help asking, causing a younger Phil to burst out laughing and look at Dan, really look at him.

“Maybe both,” Phil offered up.

“Brutal. I would have liked to see someone walking about with a half-cat, half-lady, cat lady. But the guy was probably just scared… I would imagine,” Dan coughed awkwardly at the end trying to cover his fumble. Around them the crowd swayed to and fro, pushing them closer together. He could feel Phil’s slightly bony shoulder digging into his side.

“Grammar is everything I suppose, the difference between an alien cat-lady, and an alien cat lady,” Dan blathered, not altogether sure why he couldn’t act normal around this younger Phil. He felt like a teenager again, felt as though he was talking to a shooting star not waking to the sun.

“Yeah, not many people get that. I did my degree in English language. I haven’t done anything with it, but it was still a pretty interesting degree.”

Dan had to pretend this was new information. It felt odd. He felt as though he knew almost every story Phil could possibly tell. Everything Phil could tell Dan had already been told. He could never imagine being a stranger again. He needed to make up a story, one convincing enough that Phil wouldn’t question him. In this world, he couldn’t be Daniel Howell. Phil didn’t know him yet, not enough. Not really. At this stage, they had both just been infatuated with one another. They hadn’t grown into themselves yet.

“Oh, so did I. I’m a writer actually,” He guessed it was a good enough cover. It wasn’t altogether a lie. He and Phil did, technically have a best-selling book, which he still couldn’t fathom. He couldn’t wrap his mind around half of the things they had done.

“That’s so cool, anything I’ve heard of?” Phil questioned, he looked as though he was only half with him, his mind elsewhere. Dan knew why. He still couldn’t believe in any life that he could hurt Phil, even if he hardly knew him yet. He had the overwhelming urge to kick his younger, llama loving, placenta obsessed, problematic self where the sun didn’t shine.

“Not yet, but maybe one day,” Dan breathed out cryptically before shaking his head slightly and getting himself back on track.

“Well, anyway- his fucking loss. I say you message him again and talk some sense into him,” Dan offered, though Phil was already shaking his head.

“I probably read more into it than I should have anyway, I just thought-” Phil cut himself off, burying his fists into the depths of his pockets looking as though he didn’t know what to do with his hands. 

Dan didn’t know what to do with his hands either. Half of his mind wanted to place them on the younger Phil’s shoulders. The other half of his mind kept them locked at his side. He wondered if this decision had made another universe. Somehow, he knew it had. He didn’t know what to do with this information.

 “I shouldn’t be dragging someone else into my problems.” This isn’t what Dan wanted, he didn’t want to be shut out so he quickly tried to recover the conversation.

“Hey, everyone has days where they need to spill their troubles to strangers, I’m all ears. What did you think?”

Phil paused as if considering this. Words danced at the tip of his tongue and for the longest while remained unspoken. Dan had known Phil for more years than he could count on one hand, and still, he was almost sure he had never heard what Phil was about to say. How long had these words lingered between them? Would his Phil ever say them? Dan thought there was nothing Phil could say to surprise him, maybe he was wrong.

“I don’t know what I thought. It was just, something. That sounds stupid. I liked talking to him, it was like, talking to him made me feel normal. It’s like I’ve never felt normal before in my life until I’m talking with him because he doesn’t make me feel like an idiot for not being manly like my dad tends to, or makes me feel… out of place for not really liking to go out to pubs or whatever. He lets me go on about Buffy, and- it just feels like I can talk to him about anything. I’ve never really had that,” Phil shook his head his voice fading.

“It sounds really stupid now that I say it out loud,” He finished lamely.

“You should tell him that,” Dan opted for quietly because he never knew.

He always just assumed he was the fucked up one. He never really had a best friend until he was eighteen, all that. Phil had friends, he had people who hung around with him, invited him out to parties, pubs, whatever. It never occurred to Dan that Phil didn’t really want that. Phil didn’t want to be included. He wanted to be understood. The strangest thing of all was that Dan had never needed to try to understand Phil, he just had in the same way that Phil hadn’t had to try and include Dan, try and make him feel like he was worth something, he just did. They knew what the other needed without speaking. Dan was ashamed it had taken him so long to work that out. About seven fucking years. Just to realise that yeah, he got Phil Lester and maybe, just maybe he had saved Phil like Phil saved him. Fuck he was thick.

“You said, he gets you… better than anyone else, he’s your friend, right?” Dan had promised a previous Phil, a tattooed, music addict that he would talk to Phil about their relationship, the possibility of something more than friendship. He had never specified which one. Dan had always ruled it out because they were friends, nothing more. That was all Phil had ever thought of him and Dan was perfectly okay with that. Or at least that’s what he would say if anyone took the time to ask him. Here, there were no expectations. This was before they were anything.

Phil looked over his shoulder at Dan, seeming slightly surprised by the question, getting the wide-eyed, deer in the headlights expression he always got when he was caught off guard.

“Yeah, he’s my friend- what else would he be?” This was a conversation Dan had never imagined having with Phil, his or one in any universe.

“I don’t know. It was stupid, you just- talked about him in a way that… someone, I’m not saying that’s what I think… or that there’s anything wrong with it… but it sounds slightly- as though, for someone who’s looking at it from the outside anyway-” Dan is horribly floundering.

At this point, the train had left the station again and the two boys were standing surprisingly close, the platform now a ghost town. The next train wouldn’t arrive for another half-hour, from his time at Manchester he had near enough memorised the comings and goings of several of the train lines. Phil was looking at him, surprisingly he was grinning, maybe just because Dan was acting so utterly awkward.

“You want to know if we are more than friends because friends normally don’t ‘meet friends’ online, right? It’s okay to ask, it’s 2009. It’s not that rare, for guys to like guys, I mean”

Phil was always so open-minded, Dan was only getting there now, with age and experience. He wished he was born into a family that was open and welcoming, sure, Phil still had to deal with a narrow-minded version of masculinity, but even at a young age, he had chastised this mindset, while Dan had to wait for him to teach it to him. 

“Anyway… if we’re- no. I don’t think so. I’m not sure. At first, I thought maybe he was…” Dan had to fight his body as he felt a violent red rush to his cheeks. He tried to push it down.

“Maybe, but he doesn’t talk like he sees us as that. Which is cool. I just like him, he’s nice to be around.”

“What if he did want to be like that… metaphorically of course,” Phil raised his brow then shrugged.

“Not that it matters since he ditched me. But- I just like him. I like talking to him. I don’t like to sit down and think too hard about everything I feel, I just feel it, you know? If he wanted to take things that way- I don’t think I would be opposed. People spend so much time dwelling on what their feelings mean, what it says about them. They want to put themselves in a box. I don't really want to do that. I don't want to be a person who has to fill out a checklist in life or put labels on themselves. I just want to feel what I feel and go where I go. Dan- he seems to like overthinking things.”

Well, Dan was a fucking idiot. A fucking bright red, blushing idiot who was re-evaluating the past decade of his life. If this Phil, was almost the same as his Phil, just years before- had Phil-? He thought of everything he had ever written to Phil, every message and tried to pick it apart in a new way because from the beginning Phil had thought that they could be something more than what they were. His world was spinning.

“Oh,” He spluttered awkwardly, not knowing what else to say. He was speechless and floundering.

“Well, since your friend is coming up on the next train, I could always sit and wait with you. There is a nice coffee place near the platform.”

Thank fucking god for every version of Phil Lester.

“Sounds like a plan,” Dan breathed out faintly.

“I’m not sure if he is going to show up either really. I can’t seem to get a hold of him and if I’m stuck here I might have to wait a couple years,” Phil looked at him as if he were mental, but unlike any sane human being, he didn’t leave. Instead, he took Dan to Starbucks, ordered the usual and sat across from Dan with an intent look.

“You should try texting him, your friend. Maybe you can get onto him that way.”

Dan doubted that would work. He still thought at this point anything was worth a try. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone thanking God that somehow that had come with him. He let out a sharp breath and fumbled about with the buttons looking up seeing Phil’s eyes widen slightly.

“Fancy phone,” He commented, Dan only then realising his phone was about four generations ahead of the most high-tech smartphone of the time. He just hoped he hadn’t fucked the time stream more than he already had.

“Yeah, writer money,” Dan tried to be nonchalant. It appears to work.

He spent several moments compiling a text, thinking of how odd it was that he was compiling a message to Phil- his Phil, which he would almost certainly not receive a younger version of the same boy sitting before him. After typing, retyping and correcting several dozen spelling errors he emerged with a somewhat acceptable (if not slightly underwhelming) message.

_Phil, I don’t think you’re going to get this. I know you aren’t going to get this. I’ve had the weirdest morning of my life. I wanted to talk to you. The real you. That makes no sense, right? It has been a crazy morning. I want to tell you about it. If I can. Fuck, it’s strange. Going to be a little late coming home but I’m working on it, Dan._

He waited for a reply and waited. Nothing. No reply. What had he expected? He was an idiot.

“No luck?” Younger Phil questioned, doe-eyed and docile.

“None, but whatever.”

“Double dumped.” Phil shot him a lopsided smirk. Dan did the same.

“Double dumped,” He replied, knowing the younger lad would never understand the irony.

“Well, at least I’m glad to have some company at my pity party,” Phil smirked taking another long swig. He was smiling but it wasn’t reaching his eyes. Dan’s smile couldn’t even reach his lips.

“You’re a writer, what do you write about?”

Dan lied like a man who had made a profession of it and wondered if he should consider a career change but knew if this were the Phil that knew him, the lie wouldn’t work. Phil always knew, pokerfaced or not.

“I’m working on something… a science fiction novel. I just can’t work out how to tie everything together. There is a guy, and he’s travelling through all these alternate universes but I can’t work out how he’s doing it. I just need something that makes sense, I guess I have writer’s block.”

Phil nodded looking as though he were concentrating hard, trying to find his own resolution to this problem. Maybe, Phil could work things out better than Dan so he decided to continue.

“So, this character changes worlds- when something goes wrong… but, just before. As if right before something horrible could happen he just goes to a different world.”

Dan sounded like an idiot. Phil, on the other hand, was looking at him as though he was totally sane, just nodding along listening intently.

“Well, that’s an easy problem to fix. I was reading this Wikipedia article trying to look for inspiration to…” To make his YouTube videos or really to procrastinate but use it as an excuse because he was ‘educating himself’. Dan knew Phil well enough that he didn’t need to hear the rest.

“I needed inspiration,” Phil finished lamely.

“But, there is this theory… quantum suicide and immortality- or something like that. I don’t remember. Long story short it’s like the cat in the box thing but instead of a cat in a box, that’s either dead or alive it’s a guy. This guy is put in a room and forced to play Russian roulette, gruesome crime drama, stuff. And he has a fifty-fifty chance of dying when he pulls the trigger. He either lives or he dies, and the universe splits and this keeps going and going until there is a zero percent chance of him living- but the thing is, science is weird- so it’s almost impossible for it to get to zero percent. So, the dude is metaphorically immortal. Maybe the guy in your story- every time the metaphorical bullet, is about to kill him, he goes to another universe, where it doesn’t.”

Dan’s eyes widened as Phil spoke. It was the most logical way of explaining what was going on. No. Dan didn’t know if ‘logical’ was the best use of the word. Nothing that day had been logical. This was just- not totally mental. It made sense in a backwards kind of way.

“Phil Lester you’re a genius,” Dan blurted out, overly enthusiastic, only then realising he hadn’t been told Phil’s name.

“You’re Dan, aren’t you? Like a future version of Dan?” Phil didn’t miss a beat, and Dan’s mouth was left hanging agape.

“You don’t have to say I’m right, I know I’m right,” Phil added softly.

Dan just gasped, nodding awkwardly in swift and jerky motions.

“Are we together in the future then? Since you were asking about it?”

It wasn’t just Dan’s cheeks that went red. His whole face, his neck. Everything was red. Dan was a violent red. All the blood in his body having flooded to the upmost layer of his skin.

“I’m working on it,” He managed, not knowing what had possessed him.

“But for now, you need to call up past me and tell me I’m making the biggest mistake of my life by not meeting you. And, if you like me- bloody well tell me. I’m as thick as they come back then and now. Fucking let me know, save us a few years. Yeah? Now- I actually think I have a train to catch.”

Phil looked Dan over as if he were a ghost, a dream, something that he wasn’t altogether sure was there now or had ever in fact been there at all.

Dan was checking his watch, not looking back, not letting himself have time to think, trying to outrun his common sense. He had an idea, which if he thought long enough about it, he knew he would never execute and so, he ran throwing his heart and soul into it, something he had never done. His long limbs awkwardly fumbled in a flurry of panic and urgency.

He looked at the time once more before throwing himself off the platform and onto the track. If Phil was wrong- but he wasn’t. Phil had an annoying habit of being right most of the time. Dan wouldn’t admit it, but he knew this to be true.

Looking down the black and gaping tunnel his heart began to thud, all the blood in his body was getting pumped to his ears because all he could hear was his own erratic heartbeat. He was staring down into the gaping black expanse of the Manchester Underground. He felt as though he was looking into the belly of a beast.

In the distance, Dan saw a figure, or what he thought was a figure. It was only there for a split second before it was gone again and Dan was left wide-eyed and numb as a brilliant bright light plummeted forth from the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to lie, this is a slightly slower more reflective chapter so it was somewhat more difficult to write, but I felt as though it needed to be written the way it was. A calm before the storm- if you will, because there is a lot coming in the following chapters. I did, however, want to ask you guys if there were any specific AU's you would like to see in future chapters because I am always open to ideas, hence why I left the ending of Dan's chapter vague as to where he ended up. So, if you have any ideas, feel free to leave a comment, and if it's something I could see working with the story I might just put it in. Anyway, thank you for reading xx


	5. The Oven

_**Love is our resistance  
**_ _**\- Muse** _

A dark and unpleasant street greeted Phil Lester at the foot of a place he now knew to be Dan’s apartment. There was a clock several streets in the distance towering so high over all other buildings that it dwarfed everything else in sight. It wasn’t Big Ben- or The Elizabeth Tower as it is more aptly known. It was something Phil had never seen before. The time read one in the morning, and below that, a set of blinking digital letters announced that ‘threat levels’ were mild to moderate. Phil wasn’t sure he wanted to know what type of threat this was.

The streets were desolate. It was as if all trace of human life had been wiped from the streets, opposed to one taxi cab, pulled up under the only lamppost still glowing fluorescently at the street corner. The only noise which graced his ears was that of a ticking sound, which seemed ever present, an incessant ticking.

Tick.

Bright side: whatever Phil had done had worked- kind of. He was somewhere else, where was the only question. He felt as though movement in and of itself was dangerous. He knew Dan told him to leave, but he couldn't. Under the ticking, Phil could hear shallow breaths on the other side of the door.

Tick. Breathe. Tick. Swallow. Tick. Silence. Tick.

Phil spun on his heels, facing the door again, his knuckled quietly wrapping against it. The breathing stopped for a moment but no footsteps followed. Dan was still there.

Tick. Knock. Breathe. Tick. Knock. Tick. Silence. 

“Dan, I know you’re there. I’m… confused, let me in. Please.”

He heard the breathing start up again, yet still, no speaking came. The two of them stood on opposite sides of the door, breathing and being. The sound went on ticking. Phil had this horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that speaking could end in disaster.  He wrapped his knuckles on the door again. It flung open and yet again Phil was dragged inside.

Phil opened his mouth to speak but Dan shook his head, pressing his lips tightly together as if begging him not to speak. He grabbed Phil’s wrist and tugged him back up the stairwell into his flat. Still, he didn’t speak. He moved over, turning the radio back on, drawing the curtains, turning the tap in the living room on then moved to fiddle with the several dozen locks at the front door.

Once this process was methodically completed Dan spun on his heels, looking to Phil his face going red then white, then blue. It was quite patriotic really. His emotions moving from angry to scared, to something Phil couldn't fathom. It looked as though he were holding his breath.

“What the fuck Phil?” His voice came out as a whisper though it sounded like a scream. He wanted to scream, Phil realised but something was stopping him.

The radio, the sink, the locks on the door, the drawing of the curtain. Phil was beginning to understand that whatever world he had stumbled into this time was not like the last, he didn’t feel as though he had fallen into Wonderland, quite the opposite. He felt as though he was in Dante’s Inferno.

“Today’s compound population stands at 10, 241,” The ever-present third man in the conversation, the radio, interrupted.

Phil looked from Dan to the radio then back again. What was a compound population? Why was it- relatively, so low? Why was Dan so flustered?

“You can’t just hang around here, Phil- you… you know that. I want you to stay but-“

“Today’s death toll stands at sixteen, James Matterson, Audrey Loveday-” Again the radio cut Dan off, listing off names, sixteen of them. Dan was growing more flustered.

“My partner will be home any minute Phil and they will have both of our heads if anyone catches us together. You know that. You fucking know that, dammit.”

Dan double checked the locks, looking to assure himself the blinds were sealed shut before he moved across the room to Phil, surprising the boy to no end as he roughly pressed a kiss against Phil’s lips. This wasn’t a peck, this was a panicked frenzy. Phil was out of his depth, not knowing what to do with his hands while Dan was gripping onto him desperately as if he were to disappear at any moment. His words said that Phil should disappear but his actions said the opposite. Then again that was a habit of Dan’s, saying one thing and meaning the other. Phil was still struggling to fathom that part of his personality all these years later.

Dan’s lips pressed roughly against his own, a desperate and manic frenzy. His hands were everywhere, on Phil’s hips in his hair. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been like this with anyone, never a boy- not sober at least and never Dan. He found himself trying to fit to the boy, opposed to pushing away. Why wasn’t Phil pushing him away? He was enjoying it but it felt wrong. If he was going to do this, it wasn’t the right person- or at least it wasn’t his Dan. Did he want to do this with his Dan?

All the blood rushed to the surface, to his cheeks, in ears and eyes. The world was red and pounding. He wanted to kiss Dan. He wasn’t altogether sure if this was new or old information. This was the first time it seemed like a possibility. He was always watching out for Dan’s feelings, he would only ever let himself want something if he knew Dan wanted it back. Otherwise, he would ruin what they had. They had been friends for so long, yet all the while, Phil wasn’t opposed to kissing and more importantly what kissing entailed. He would never admit it.

Phil was still in shock when Dan pushed him off, groaning in frustration and covering his face. There was some conflict going on here Phil couldn’t understand, and it was more than the common, internalised homophobia or general Dan angst. Everything he was doing felt desperate and frantic.

“Dan, breathe for a second- talk to me don’t yell at me. Talk to me.”

Phil tried to act like air, tried to pump himself into Dan’s lungs and convince him to breathe. To calm. It didn’t look promising. The only time he saw his Dan like this was over losing Mario Kart (something Dan took surprisingly seriously and personally) but even then, it was a diluted version of this. He had never seen this.

“We don’t have time-” Dan was interrupted by a wrapping at the front door. His face sunk.

He looked Phil over, before quickly looking about the house, his eyes locking on the broom closet at the far side of the room.

“What the fuck will I tell her if she sees you?” Dan rambled, more to himself than to Phil as he began pushing Phil to the direction of the closet.

“That we have a complicated and multifaceted friendship that wouldn’t be fixed by you shoving me into a closet?” Phil tried to humour. It failed.

“Fuck you, Phil Lester,” Dan breathed, opening the closet door and shoved Phil roughly into it. Phil could still taste Dan on his lips and blood in his mouth. The kiss had been so rough and desperate it broke the skin of Phil’s lower lip. He touched it quietly, looking at this Dan with wide eyes.

“Please be quiet,” Dan muttered about to shut the door.

“Just until I can get her to go again, okay?” Phil mimicked zipping his lips and stumbled backwards tripping over his own feet before catching himself.

Dan shut the door and uttered, mostly to himself but just loud enough for Phil to hear,

“I’m so fucked.”

***

She sounded nice, Dan’s partner. Phil didn’t know why but that was important. He supposed that he wanted his best friend to be with someone who made him happy or at least content but Phil was so utterly confused. One second Dan was kissing him, the next he was being shoved in a closet. Now the radio was off, Dan’s voice mingled with another. A feminine one Phil didn’t know. He supposed she was nice because she asked him about the day, listened like she cared. Phil couldn’t see anything though, couldn’t gauge the body language but there was a disconnect in her voice and in Dan’s. The whole situation was perplexing.

“I’m going to have a shower before we-” The feminine voice began but didn’t finish. The words seemed to get tangled in her throat.

“Good idea,” Dan didn’t need for her to explain what she meant. Phil did.

It wasn’t until he heard running water that he dared to step closer to the front of the closet, about to try and peek out when the door flung open. Dan’s eyes met his own. He looked less frantic and more morose. Phil didn’t understand.

“I’ll walk you downstairs okay? It’s not that weird for me to go on walks beforehand, she won’t suspect much,” Phil didn’t know what to say. He just began to follow Dan out into the hallway again.

Dan seemed tense and Phil felt his hand twitch at his side, deciding if he should risk trying to comfort the younger boy while he had no clue what was going on. He let his hand reach for Dan, resting it on his shoulder, opting for that to be his safest bet. It was normally a safe enough space when Dan needed comfort. It wasn’t too intimate, yet it was a grounding comfort. Dan leant into it, not away from it. That was a rarity. 

“She seemed nice, the girl,” Phil acknowledged quietly.

It wasn’t the right thing to say because Dan’s shoulders grew tense. Phil shyly dug his fingers slightly deeper into his flesh, trying to ground him. This Dan seemed so panicked and desperate like time was a ticking clock hanging over their heads. Phil kept getting the sensation that in this world, they never had enough time, that they never would get enough. The closer to the ground floor they became the louder the now returned ticking sounds grew.

“This is so fucking unfair,” Dan breathed out surprising Phil with how much emotion bubbled under the surface.

Tick. Huff. Tick.

“It isn’t,” Phil tried, not knowing what they were talking about but it seemed like the right thing to say.

Tick. Breathe. Silence. Tick.

This time Dan again seemed to calm, his shaky breathing slowly returning to normal. Phil’s head was spinning. He found his hand rubbing small circles into Dan’s skin, trying to knead the knots from his muscles. He had never seen his Dan in such a manner.

“You are going to have to stop when we get out into the streets,” Dan informed, barely audible.

‘I don’t want you to stop.’ Was what Phil heard.

It was reading between the lines. Once reaching the ground floor Dan made no effort to open the back door, out from the stairwell and into the street, so Phil made no move to stop. He hated seeing any version of Dan any less than happy, so he quietly moved Dan closer to him, pulling him into a hug.

This was something they did on occasion, Phil and his Dan. It didn’t happen too often but there were moments when Dan had bad days. The days where he would lay sprawled out on their living room floor for hours on end without uttering words, moving or even eating where Phil would quietly make his way over and without saying a word hold him in this way. It helped, Phil wasn’t sure how but it always made him calmer, more willing to talk, draw him out of his own mind. 

Dan would return the favour when Phil was having the rare bouts of social anxiety, mostly coming into full swing at conventions. He remembered times, where he would have to excuse himself, rushing into some deserted room or hallway to catch his quickening, breathes and remind himself that his head was making the situation ten times worse than it really was. Dan would always appear with a faint smile, a tight hug and a muttered,

“You’re doing great, you’re fine,” or something of that description.

It would calm Phil. So, when this Dan needed calming it was second nature to pull him into a hug. Instead of remaining tense, this Dan sunk into him. Dan rested his chin on Phil’s shoulder and held the hug for longer than either of them normally would. Phil didn’t mind. He really didn’t mind. Dan’s skin was warm and smelt like home, his grip grounded Phil as much as Phil’s grounded Dan- though he would never say that. Out of the two, Phil was always meant to be the put together one.

“You said I had to go,” Phil pointed out, his voice near enough to nothing. Dan could only hear it because it was whispered against his skin.

“You do have to go,” Dan didn’t hesitate to answer.

“You know you have to go.” Phil didn’t.

“I know,” He still replied.

Dan’s hands held tighter, still saying what his words would not. There was silence. It was just a hug, a tight and silent embrace but it felt as though there was something palpably sad between them in this moment. He felt like an actor, who had forgotten all his lines but not his drive. He knew how he was meant to feel, and what he was meant to feel was miserable. So, he felt it. He closed his eyes and just felt.

“You’ve got to leave because there’s no way I’m letting you go. Be safe yeah? For fuck’s sake be safe, come back soon but not too soon. I think my neighbours already think something is up.”

Phil nodded though he didn’t understand. He kept playing his role as he pulled himself from Dan and wondered why it was he knew he couldn’t stay. In any other world, Phil would have stayed but this felt bigger than him.

“I’ll see you soon then,” He lamented and opened the door out into the street, into the back alleyway.

He separated the two of them, again with the door hearing it be bolted shut behind him. He could still hear Dan breathing. This time he started walking, not altogether sure what direction he should be heading he chose away from the cab, still parked precariously under the only working lamp in the street. Something deep in his chest told him he was not meant to be seen and so he headed in the opposite direction, plunging into the darkness of the streets ahead of him, into the unknown.

The clock still ticked.

***

Phil Lester was alone in a dark street. A street with no notable name. He had no maps to gauge his location. The only way he knew anything about where he was and how far he had travelled was by gazing up at the large clock building. He knew what direction he was travelling in from its location, and knew how close he was to it by the volume of the incessant ticking it omitted.

He was beginning to question how he could disturb this universe enough to send him to another when the ticking was interrupted by a low growl. The noise sounded both human and animal, like a savage crossbreed between the two. His eyes had adjusted to the dark and still, he struggled to see where the noise was coming from. He kept spinning, his body moving whenever another noise would emerge. He followed the noise and finally looked down. A ravaged and fleshy lump of decay lay at his feet. A body, or the ghost of a body.

The thing still had enough of a mouth to make noise, though its arms and legs were too malnourished to support its weight so it lay there, crumpled in on itself. Its face looked sunken in and its eyes were pits of blackness.

Phil quickly lurched back and started to jog in the opposite direction, suddenly feeling as though he needed to get out of the open. He was no longer being careful. He didn’t care about being quiet, he cared about getting away from this place. He was running when another set of feet chimed in with his, in hot pursuit.

Tick. Growl. Slam. Tick.

This thing sounded slightly more human, it sounded more like screaming than howling. Phil dared to look over his shoulder confirming his fears, a decaying person pale, bloated and reeking of death followed hot on his heels.

Phil wasn’t a runner. He couldn’t keep this up for any longer. He also wasn’t a fighter. Instead of looking around for weapons he was looking for places to hide. He found himself jerking his body left into another street and scrambling to hide behind a set of industrial-sized bins and cardboard boxes. His breathing was going to give him away. It was too quick, too panicked, too loud.

This was it. He was going to die. He was going to die here. He supposed death by zombies was an interesting way of going but Phil didn’t want to go at all. He cupped his hands over his mouth, trying to muffle his breath. The clock kept ticking.  

Phil tried to think fast. This wasn’t a video game. He didn’t have any weapons and soon enough the crawling creatures and running half things would catch up to him, find him. He tucked himself closer to the wall, placing his feet behind the industrial bin, ready to shove his weight against it when anything got too close, hoping to block them off from the rest of the street and give himself a little more time to run. He didn’t have enough time to think his plan through when his phone buzzed obnoxiously in his back pocket the noise rattled off the walls of the backstreet. Phil then heard a set of footsteps quickly heading in his direction.

First plan, best plan. Brightside: at least he had a plan.

He kicked out his legs, finding the task harder than he had first anticipated. The metal let out a high pitched and shrill groaning, drowning out the sound of the ticking. Phil was about to run for it as the bin came into contact with a body. It didn't groan or howl as he would have expected. Instead, it let out a string of words, most of which were curses, sounding very human, very alive.

“Oh, for bloody fuck,” A distinctly shrill and English accent spat.

Phil’s eyes widened as he stopped mid pace and spun around again, coming face to face with an old friend he hadn’t expected to find here of all places.

“PJ?” Phil breathed seeing a slightly shorter boy, with a wild mess of hair and flushed, pale cheeks looking back at him. He was a friend, a fellow Youtuber and most importantly a familiar face in this god-awful world.

“Who else? Come on, you stay out here for any longer and you’ll be zombie bait, mate. I know you’re a man out of your element but I thought you would have some common sense.”

Phil furrowed his brows, unsure of PJ’s words. He was speaking with a kind of knowing, which a boy from another strange dimension shouldn’t harbour. PJ didn’t give him time to think, he just tugged Phil by the collar of his shirt and dragged him out into the open streets. There was a taxi cab pulled up only a few yards away, the same cab that had been outside Dan’s flat. PJ headed towards it, flinging open the passenger door and shoving Phil into it.

“Welcome, to PJ’s epic escape taxi, the exits are everywhere- if you are determined enough. Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times unless you want to be zombie bait. In which case, please exit the vehicle because unlike you I don’t get to hop into another universe whenever I die, lucky bastard. It’s like you and Dan are playing with cheat codes.”

Phil was struggling with his seatbelt as the car roared to life and soared forward. Phil was instantly reminded of his own tendency towards car sickness as his stomach settled in his mouth.

“Dan and I… other worlds? How do you…?” Phil felt as though he was going to throw up.

“Vomit bag on the backseat. Keep up, Lester. I know you don’t belong in this universe or any of the other ones you’ve been jumping about today.”

PJ never took his eyes off the road as he spoke. Phil lurched back trying to grab a paper bag conveniently placed in the back seat. He cradled it as if it were a child or a lifeline.

“You’re my PJ… the one from my universe, aren’t you? Not the one from this world?”

PJ let out a slightly manic laugh and hung a sharp right, sending Phil’s body careening into the passenger window and the contents of his stomach into the bottom of the bag.

“That’s a bit of a funny story. Unlike you and Dan… and most other people on the planet really- there’s only one PJ. I think the universe fucked up when they made me, but being able to hop between them has been pretty beneficial. Where do you think I get all my cool ideas for short films from? I’m only half as creative as you think I am.”

Phil felt as though he was one step behind in their conversation, about to set an onslaught of questions when the car jerked upwards as if over a speed bump. There was a shrill screeching from beneath them. This time it sounded nothing like a human.

“Bloody crawlers, always fucking up the roads.” 

“Crawlers?” Phil squeaked.

“Yeah, it’s a nickname people in this world have for them. Crawlers are the old ones. They are too decayed to be any real trouble. It’s breathers you should worry about. They were chasing you before. Thank fuck you haven’t had a run in with runners. They are people who are immune or half immune. They still get the crazy zombie hunger for human flesh but they don’t decay. Tricky buggers to avoid once you’ve got them on your trail. A quick fix is a shotgun to the head, but shotguns are surprisingly tricky to get here. Most of the fighters opt for the Van Helsing method. Stake to the heart and all that. Very vampiric.” 

Phil listened, all the while trying to calm the sloshing sensation in his stomach. He let all this new information settle in. This world was far more dangerous than he was used to. He might enjoy watching shows about heroism, fighting vampires and zombies but he was never meant to be the protagonist in the centre of the situation. He was pale, car sick and so far in over his head he wasn’t just drowning, he had the bends.

“Why is this Dan so…”

“Anxious? Panicky? Borderline mental?” PJ supplied.

“Sad,” Phil finished quietly.

“And desperate.”

He had so many questions on his mind yet this one seemed to stand out. It was like his Dan ramped up to eleven. PJ went quiet for a moment as if considering how to continue. Phil watched as his knuckles grew paler as his grip on the steering wheel tightened.

“This world is shot to shit Phil, one of several that are. This city- this compound exists behind a huge arse set of walls, trying to keep those shitty half human things out. They get through, it happens more than it should. There are cameras across the city. The government keeps an eye out for them, sends people in when it’s needed but lots of people also think the cameras are there to keep people under control. A lot more people disappear opposed to dying. It begins to look suspicious.”

It was only when they reached a seemingly populated area, lit up in neon and fluorescence that PJ began to slow the cab. There were men in army attire at each street corner. Phil tried to remind himself not to look suspicious. He didn’t know what 'suspicious' looked like in this world. PJ turned on the radio.

"There hasn't been a war in years," An authoritative voice spoke.

"People are finally at peace, now that we have found a common enemy. Something to revel against, our prisons are empty. The population is growing. The world has never been better and the future has never looked brighter."

PJ scoffed at the comment then continued talking.

“The world population has gone to shit, so people have been assigned partners you know... repopulate the earth- shit like that. Have a kid, the second it’s kicking the government takes it- sends it to some safer institution, raise it to be ‘compliant’… repeat. Same-sex relationships are illegal. The punishment is… well, no one really knows. You just disappear, become a name on the radio.”

Phil’s face was contorted in disgust and it wasn’t due to the fact that his bile was beginning to wreak, or that it had sloshed over his favourite pair of jeans.  It was medieval.

“So, that’s what Dan and I are in this world? A… couple?”

PJ looked at Phil as though he had spirted a second head. He then let out a throaty scoff and rolled his eyes.

“Yes, lover boy, obviously.”

“Well, I’m sorry. That’s just not what we’re like in my universe,” Phil defended.

“I know what you’re like in your universe. Universal PJ- remember? It is infuriating how thick you both are. At least in every other world, you figure out you like one another. Talking about infuriating, you have no clue how much you two have fucked up multiple universes… also, you should check your phone. You got a text before I found you, remember?”

Phil’s eyes widened and he reached into his pocket, awkwardly juggling his bag of vomit, praying that they could dispose of it soon.

_I miss you too. When I get home we need to talk. Okay? I have so much to tell you- Dan._

“Dan?” PJ guessed before Phil could ask how he knew he simply added,

“That’s your Dan face. I would ask you to text him and ask him where and when he is- but texting between universes is complicated. It usually only sends in between worlds. Complicated and slow. You were easy enough to find. He’s harder. He’s hopping through places faster.”

Phil sat up straighter eyes swelling, letting this set in as a voice on the radio carried on about all the good the government did for the world. No questions were asked that they weren’t prepared for. Phil couldn’t help but think it was scripted.

“So, Dan’s alive and stuck… like me?”

PJ pressed his face against the steering wheel for a moment, clearly sick of explaining. It wasn’t Phil’s fault he was taking so long to catch on. PJ was born into this weird string of universes, conscious of all of them. Phil was used to living life on one straight line. He liked life simple.

“Yes, he is also alive and fucking shit up. You can’t be in the same universe as your other self- two can’t co-exist in the same world. It just doesn’t work. There is only one of me so I don’t have to worry about it. You two, are seriously fucking up other worlds,”

Phil began worrying a hole in his bottom lip, his teeth digging into flesh. He was beginning to feel sick again.

“How can we fix it?” This time PJ smiled.

“I have a plan, a full proof, bloody brilliant plan.”

“Which is?” Phil questioned.

“I need to get the two of you back to the night before either of you travelled. Then you two stay there. Bada bing bada boom. Make sure real Dan doesn’t die. Sort your shit out instead of running from it… like both of you did. Don’t tell me you didn’t. I had to go back and see what I was dealing with. The universe is pissed at you two. Go back to the night before, we fix everything. Simple.”

In theory, it was simple but even thinking of the night before, yesterday, if time even still existed, made his heart ache.

PJ was right, they had both run from it. Phil just wasn’t sure if he was ready to face it. 

“Why does the universe care so much about the two of us getting together? Surely it has better things to do-” PJ was already shaking his head.

“From what I have seen with every universe, people have some constants. In every universe, every perverted version of a person still has some constants. There are parts of them that are the same, no matter how different the rest of the world is. You and Dan are with one another, constantly. You not being together- it’s unheard of.”

“If you were a mistake, how come the universe isn’t after you just us?”

PJ’s chest rose and fell as he finally pulled up, reclining his seat back so he was almost laying down. He looked Phil over, almost begging for him to understand. Phil was trying. He really was.

“I like to think I was a purposeful mistake. I’m like … Heimdall in Norse mythology. I’m guarding the bridge between worlds. So, when something messes up it’s my job to fix it. I’m fixing it.” PJ’s eyes slid shut.

“By sleeping?” Phil asked. PJ opened one eye, meeting Phil’s then letting it slide shut again dismissively.

“Hey, you travel when you die- I travel when I sleep. I need to find Dan. Jump off a bridge, or something- find yourself a safe universe and stay put, don’t jump about too much. It can do some real damage. Wait for me there, okay?”

PJ unlocked the passenger door, and leant over pulling it open. He then clambered into the backseat of the car rummaging around, pulling a battered cardboard box from under the seat, decorated like a child’s craft project. A harmless looking little trinket. PJ returned to his place, reclined back in the driver's seat.

“What’s-?”

“A lullaby cube, it helps me sleep quicker,” PJ interjected as if that explained everything.

“No time to waist.”

He set the thing beside him, turning the lever, which jutted from the left side of the box. Music began to play, drowning out the radio and the ticking. It was an enchanting and unearthly trill. Phil himself felt sleepy. Smoke poured forth from the box and PJ’s eyes glided shut. Soon he was gone. Phil was alone. He moved out of the car, back into the blackened street.

Phil Lester collected his thoughts and moved to find himself a bridge.


	6. Interlude

**_I go from loving to not loving you,_ **  
**From waiting to not waiting for you**  
**My heart moves from cold to fire.**  
**-Pablo Neruda**

**Before**

It didn’t matter the space that separated them. The five odd yards from one side of the room to the other. It didn’t matter that there were a handful of people in their way. They could read each other’s body.

Phil could tell Dan was drunk by the way his shoulders hunched over, by the way his brown eyes glazed over hazel. He was there but not present. He swayed, slightly out of time with the music.

Dan could tell Phil was sober by his stance, too rigid, he didn’t know what to do with his hands so he cradled a cocktail, near enough to full. Dan could also tell he wanted to leave.

The two of them were never the type for social events but it wasn’t often that their friends and fellow YouTubers were in one place. Many of their friends from America had crossed the pond for some convention neither of the boys could quite place the name of. It was one of the rare instances that they would force themselves to place on their masks of false sociability and venture out of their own little bubble.

They were playing Mr Brightside again. It was the third time in as many hours. Phil felt as though he was back at university. Dan had been captured by someone with a loud and bubbly laugh. Phil guessed it was Tyler. He was trying not to be hyper aware of the other boy and instead join in the conversation Louise and Zoe had started with him several moments before. They were speaking of something seemingly humorous that Darcy, Louise's daughter, had done several days before.

Phil’s social battery life was draining. They were interesting but he had been standing for far too long. His legs had begun to cramp and ache. His head hurt from the rise and fall of the throbbing bass speakers he had the misfortune of standing directly beside. He couldn’t bring himself to try and hold a conversation with everything going on. He just wanted to leave.

“Darcy is so cute,” Zoe was saying as Phil trailed his eyes back to the two women.

“She makes me want to have my own kid, don’t you think Phil?” Phil was only half paying attention. Dan was now looking directly at him, his eyes hazed but somehow focused.

“Yeah sure,” He mumbled unsure of the question.

“You could always adopt,” She assumed, which seemed to snap Phil from his trance.

“What?” He questioned but the conversation had swiftly moved on as though she hadn’t spoken. Phil needed to get out of there.

Dan was a mind reader even while drunk. Phil was always quietly impressed by this talent. He crossed the room and fell into his usual place beside Phil. He cautiously grabbed onto the other boy’s arm for stability. He was seeing double- which wasn’t particularly normal. He couldn't remember where his drink had gone, he looked down at his hand for slightly longer than necessary as if it were somehow going to reappear.

“I think we should go home soon before I lose all of my street cred and vomit all over myself,” Dan slurred, his words running together like water.

“You never had street cred,” Phil chuckled.

Dan shot back a remark drowned out by the music. Phil looked Dan over, squinting slightly as he tried to work out what exactly he had said. It was too loud. He felt a migraine coming on and he was the sober one, or relatively so. Dan and Phil worked as yin and yang. If Dan decided to drink at a party Phil would opt to stay sober. If Phil decided to drink Dan wouldn’t.

They had never discussed this, it had just become a habit they had fallen into. One needed to be aware enough to look after the other. It wasn’t as though Phil didn’t trust Tyler, Louise, Zoe, PJ or anyone at the party to be completely capable of dealing with a drunk Dan and assuring he didn’t do anything he would later regret. It was just that he didn’t want anyone but himself to have to. It appeared Dan had the same mindset.

Dan groaned and pressed himself closer to Phil still, the younger boy’s breath danced across Phil’s skin causing goose flesh to erupt. He was getting closer for convenience, Phil had to tell himself. Dan thought Phil’s hair smelt like peaches and he wasn’t altogether sure how. He leant closer still because he liked it.

“I said your fucking mum doesn’t have street cred,” Dan was practically yelling in Phil’s ear. He got the message.

“Well, your mum…” Phil shot back not sure how to finish.

This caused Dan to chuckle, swaying from one foot to the next. The others continued their conversation, leaving the two boys to fall back into one another. The two women knew well enough that there were moments when the two would withdraw from the world and fall into one another. Whether it was romantic or otherwise the two lived within their own world.

“My mum… that’s an insult?” Dan challenged.

“Your mum’s an insult,” Phil attempted only causing Dan to laugh harder, the grip on Phil’s forearm tightening.

Phil thought Dan was stumbling so he placed his hand on the small of the younger boy’s back, attempting to stabilise him. Dan wasn’t as drunk as Phil thought he was. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take full advantage of his new Phil shaped crutch. 

“You aren’t about to throw up on me, are you?” Phil questioned looking over his shoulder.

Dan’s breath was still hot on his neck. He let his head fall onto Phil’s shoulder mumbling incoherently into the boy’s shoulder. Phil tried to follow with no avail. He just sighed quietly letting his head lull backwards so he too was leaning slightly more against Dan. His words sent vibrations against his skin.

Phil’s eyes trailed across the room, meeting PJ’s. He watched the boy raise a brow at Phil, then his eyes trail over to Dan. Phil translated this as the boy asking if Dan was okay. Phil mouthed,

‘He’s fine.’

PJ just tilted his head and raised his cup, likely filled with some bitter tasting lager Phil wouldn’t dare try but most other boys consumed as if it were made of milk and honey, as if it went down like silk. He supposed it was personal preference, though Dan tended to agree. He has been quoted saying it tasted of ‘piss and washing detergent’. Phil tended to agree.

PJ disappeared back into the crowd, his face drowning in a sea of others. He was there one moment and gone the next. It was almost as if he disappeared altogether. 

“I can’t hear you Danny boy,” Phil went on.

Dan raised his head, screwed up his nose and gave Phil’s arm a tight squeeze before his head flopped back down onto Phil’s shoulder.

“If you call me Danny boy again I will throw up all over you and I won’t even feel bad about it.”

“Brutal.”

“Truthful.”

Phil only then realised that their group had moved away from them. He tried to recall if they had said goodbye. He had the odd feeling they had, yet he had no recollection of it. Dan was mindlessly curious as to where Phil got his shirt because even though it was a colourful and obnoxious fashion choice, it felt soft. Maybe he was just drunker than he thought. He wasn’t at the stage where he felt queasy, just light on his feet, floaty and spinning. He felt as though if he let Phil go he would float off the ground, and spin like a rag doll in a washing machine.

“Can we go home?” Dan mused.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Phil failed at not sounding relieved.

***

The two boys made a quick getaway, saying their goodbyes while already heading for the exit. It was a particularly cold London night and the air held the familiar chill of possibility. Dan was shivering. He hadn’t brought his coat, having left the self-proclaimed ‘only coat’ that went well with his outfit at his family home the week before when he had visited. Phil thought it was ridiculous but Dan often had the habit of being ridiculous.

Phil’s jumper was so thick he was practically sweating. Dan was still gripping onto his forearm. As Phil looked about, trying to flag down a taxi, neither boy was in the mood to catch The Tube at such an hour of the night.

“You’re freezing,” Phil pointed out, Dan was already shrugging.

“I don’t feel cold.”

“That’s because you’re drunk,” Phil acted as a voice of reason.

“You're drunk,” Dan shot back, drunkenly.

Phil just rolled his eyes and shook Dan’s hand from his forearm so he could remove his jacket, splaying it over the other boy’s shoulders. He opened his mouth as if he were about to argue but instead shut it again and smiled smugly.

“I’m going to tell the internet about this,” Dan declared, a slight spring in his step.

“Okay, you do that Danny boy.”

“I will projectile vomit over you and your jacket Phillip,” Dan jeered, it sounded sharp but Phil knew all too well he was all bark and no bite.

“That would be rather talented of you really.” Phil remained calm because nothing pissed Dan off more than not getting a reaction.

Phil managed to flag down a cab and helped Dan clamber over into the far side of the back seat before following him and telling the driver their address. He never turned around, just nodded. Something about the back of his head seemed familiar, the slightly curling hair, brown but not as dark as Dan’s, and the voice, he was sure he had heard before.

Dan had made himself a makeshift pillow from Phil’s jacket, resting his head against the window, feeling every slight bump and rise in the road. It was so cold that his breath now fogged the glass. He mindlessly drew shapes with his fingers, lopsided smiles, coffee mugs, sunflowers.

“You hate sunflowers,” Phil hummed.

While Dan had been looking out the window, Phil had been watching him. Dan felt a blush rise in his cheeks, unsure as to why. He turned away as soon as he felt his colour change.

“You remembered,” Dan breathed.

Phil simply nodded and leant over drawing two eyes and a crooked smile in the middle of the sun flower, smirking slightly over at Dan watching him assess his addition.

“Flowey?” He guessed and Phil nodded.

“Artistic genius,” Dan assured before he let his eyes glide shut, kicking his feet up into Phil’s lap.

For a while Phil sat in silence, listening to the radio. They were playing Muse. Phil smiled wider than he should have. Dan’s feet in his lap tapped absentmindedly to the music. Phil smirked but knocked Dan’s feet none the less.

“You were my guiding light,” Dan quoted softly, one eye opening to catch Phil’s eye.

Phil wasn't sure he was meant to hear it but he had. With Dan and this song, Phil could almost pretend no time had passed since they had met, that all the years they had spent together meant nothing. They were still young, still naive, still mostly untouched by the world. He wouldn't say they had been innocent, they had just been freer to be sheltered.

“What’s the song?” Dan asked Phil who scoffed.

“Guiding Light, Muse.”

“Come on Phil, you have been a radio announcer, give me a little more than that.” Phil rolled his eyes.

“Guiding Light, from Muse’s 2009 album The Resistance. One that you would play literally every time you would come over to my place when we first met.”

Dan opened both eyes and chuckled quietly before readjusting himself, settling closer still to Phil, still humming along.

“Nice anecdote.” 

For the rest of the drive Dan stays somewhere between sleep and waking, his body slowly becoming heavier in Phil’s lap. Once they arrived home Phil leant forward to pay for the taxi, but the man never once looked back, he simply uttered,

“No charge.”

Phil shook Dan awake, giving the sleepy and drunken lad a shoulder to lean on as they headed out into the street, Phil holding him up with one arm, the other rummaging around in his pocket for their house key. The taxi sped off. They were alone once more. But that’s how they liked it.

Dan kept tripping on the way upstairs and Phil’s clumsy feet were little help. At the top of their second-floor landing, they both ended up taking a tumble, Phil crashing into, then through his oversized house plant while Dan careened into their bookcase, knocking over books, paintings and assorted knickknacks.

The two lay beside one another on the floor in a pile of assorted limbs pale skin and flushed cheeks. Dan laughed first, dimples showing, eyes crinkling. He was loud and unapologetic, the kind of laugh that could shake foundations. It was an amazing laugh. Phil laughed next. It was all facial expressions and floundered gasps. Noiseless cackling, with a shaking frame.

They were hopeless.

Dan looked over and realised he was hopeless in a whole other regard.

Phil had already known he was that type of hopeless for a long while.

Dan began to lean in. His body moving on its own, knowing what it wanted, knowing what his drunk brain wanted, knowing what his sober brain denied him. He really wanted to snog his best mate. He wasn’t even sorry. They were so close. He had been sitting in a raft, denying himself water, knowing that what surrounded him couldn’t be sustainable but he didn’t care. He had just grown mad enough to allow himself to drink. He breathed the other boy in like air and moved to taste.

Phil pulled away.

“You’re drunk.”

It was loud in his own ears. He didn’t know heartbreak could physically hurt up until now. It could.

“I wasn’t- I didn’t mean,” His eyes were wide he was fumbling and breaking.

He felt himself shattering before Phil’s eyes. It was like his words, his denial, had the ability to physically take him apart. His heart was laying at his feet, bloody and pulsing. When he tried to pick it up his arms shattered, shoulders slumping. He was so fucking stupid. Fuck. 

Phil had said something very wrong. Or very right. He knew that to kiss Dan now, in his state would be taking advantage of him. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to. He wanted to god he wanted to. He just couldn't. He wanted to. He needed to say something. Anything. The denial was out of respect not lack of love. The love was there. That's why he said no. Couldn't Dan understand that?

“It’s not that-” He couldn’t finish.

“I get it,” Dan spoke, standing up, stumbling.

He didn’t. He didn’t get it. Phil’s eyes were wide. His mouth hung agape. Things were falling apart. He had to scavenge to put the pieces back together, but what if Dan was just drunk? What if Phil was just reading something into nothing, but his eyes- God his eyes were heartbroken.

“That’s not what I meant,” Phil trailed off, trying again.

Dan stopped. He didn’t turn around, didn’t move closer. He just stopped. His jaw squared. His body a ball of tension. This wasn’t happening.

“Then what did you mean Phil?” Dan dared a glance at the other boy. His face was so vulnerable but Dan didn’t know what to make of it. 

Could Phil say it? Could it be that easy? What if this changed everything? What if Dan was just being impulsive? What if he didn’t mean it? If Phil said it now would he mean it?

His throat swelled shut. He could hardly breathe. Say something. Say something. Say something.

“I-”

Dan turned around again, shaking his head, scrubbing his face.

“I should get to sleep.”

Phil felt as though a door had been shut in his face. He still couldn’t speak so he nodded. God. He just nodded. Why couldn’t he say anything? He was scared. He shut his eyes and when he opened them again Dan was gone.

Phil wasn’t sure when he decided to do it but he pulled his duvet and pillow into the hallway, setting them up outside Dan’s door. He had heard enough horror stories about drunk people falling asleep and choking on their own vomit. He would usually make sure Dan had water before bed, something to soothe an oncoming hangover or let the boy sleep in his room but it didn’t feel right to offer it now.

So, Phil slept in the hallway. Except he didn’t sleep. He played on his phone and he listened. He heard Dan settle into bed, heard the rise and fall of his breaths, heard them grow ragged. They almost sounded like sobs. Phil told himself it was his imagination.

Dan settled in still feeling like he was falling apart. His head was still spinning but his mind, fuck, his mind was reeling. He looked up at the roof and tried to convince himself he wasn’t hurt. He didn’t feel what he felt. He placed Band-Aids on bullet wounds and convinced himself he wasn't dying. After about three hours of reciting this fact over in his head, exhaustion kicked in and he began to believe himself.

Love to Dan was a butcher with a butter knife, carving his heart and mincing his insides. Everything hurt. Everything was jumbled. Nothing made sense. It just hurt. It was the kind of pain that couldn’t be pinpointed. His head throbbed, yes but this was more. This was his whole soul, being, whatever, bending so far into itself it shattered.

To Phil love was a flower that died before it got the chance to bloom. It was beautiful even in death but he wished more than anything he could bring it back to its prime. He wished he could say something, do something to make it beautiful again. It just looked like death and crumbled whenever he thought he was close enough to touch it.

Both could agree, love was cruel.

***

Dan awoke not knowing what hurt more, his head or his heart. Both throbbed. He heard both beating. He prayed, or the nihilistic equivalent, that they could go back to normal. It wasn’t what he wanted but it was better than nothing. He collected himself and pulled himself out of bed, surprisingly early for him. He kept repeating that he was happy with this, he and Phil. They were friends. Nothing more, nothing less. They weren’t lovers, contrary to popular belief.

He headed out into the hallway, almost falling over a sullenly silent Phil Lester. The body sprung to life and looked up at Dan, with slightly wide eyes.

“I thought I was the drunk one. Why are you sleeping in the hallway?” If Dan pretended nothing happened it didn’t hurt.

“I…” Damn it, Phil. Find your words.

“I just… the floor seemed comfy… about last night.” Dan’s face twitched.

“I don’t really remember much. My head is killing me though. I might go out for a walk to clear it.”

Dan was acting like he didn’t remember it. Phil knew he did. He only went for walks when something was on his mind. So, was this them? They would ignore what had happened. Could they? Phil struggled to imagine it. He felt himself splitting in two. Should he bring it up or ignore it?

“Okay,” His voice broke.

“Take your coat, it’s cold.” He whimpered through his closing throat, through nerves.

“Do you want me to get anything while I’m out?” Dan didn’t meet Phil’s eye.

“Coffee would be nice,” Phil breathed almost testing if Dan would agree.

“Coffee it is then.”

Dan didn’t take his coat. Dan didn’t come back at all. 


	7. The Death, The Artist, The Blue Boy

**_The bitterness of winter or the sweetness of spring_ **   
**You are an artist and your heart is your masterpiece**   
**And I’ll keep it safe**   
**-Sleeping at Last**

Dan opened his eyes to find something cold and metallic pressed against his forehead. He heard a click. He turned his head ever so slightly. He saw a gun. Before he had time to work out what was happening a violent bang shattered his concentration. His ears rang, as though he was standing in the middle of a bell as it chimed. Before he had the time to feel pain, he was somewhere else entirely.

He sat with a boy sleeping on his shoulder, a jumper wrapped around him. It was Phil, they were on a train. Dan knew the track as he looked out the window. They were almost outside of London. He wondered quietly where they could be going. He looked down at Phil, considering if he should wake him up to ask, his hand slid down to brush Phil’s hair from his eyes absentmindedly. He knew he shouldn’t feel this unconscious tugging but he did. He always did.

Dan just sighed and stared out the window watching the world roll by. Something in the pit of his stomach dripped with anticipation and something else, maybe regret. He wasn’t altogether sure if these emotions were his own.

A passenger caught Dan’s eye, a boy with pale blue lips, he knew that face. The train began to sway violently, shaking and tremoring. Dan had the feeling he was about to disappear from this world as soon as he had been thrust into it.

It sounded as though the heavens split open. Shrapnel in jagged sparks of metallic rain began to fall onto the front of the train. His arms gripped tighter around Phil, this Phil. Another imposter. Not his own but close enough that the thought of anything bad happening to him made his heart ache. Dan shut his eyes in anticipation. When he opened them, he was somewhere else entirely.

***

Dan’s eyes took time to adjust to the sudden onslaught of light. It bounced about a small and open room, causing his pupils to swell. Everything felt warm, comfortable. After the light grew bearable he began to see. He was laying on a futon, one arm stretched out before him, curling around something with fur, something warm, something breathing. A dog. A hazelnut coloured shiba inu. Curled into his back was another set of creatures, two small cats, one gently snoring. Maybe Dan had stumbled into a world he might actually enjoy.

He felt a cough wrack his frame, disturbing the animals. He placed a hand over his mouth to stifle it, upon removing it he found his palms spattered with specks of deep, brownish, red blood. Another cough shook his frame.

Congealed blood rose in his throat and settled in his mouth. The world tasted metal and iron. He could hardly control his gag reflexes as he rolled over and coughed up the content of his stomach onto the floor, painting the wooden slats red, an unwelcome addition to the decor. He still felt sick, drained, ill. He tried to stand, to pull himself out of the blood and vomit but his arms trembled as he tried to push himself into a sitting position. His body was weak.

That couldn’t be good. Something was very, very wrong. He felt worry and dread begin to swell in him. Maybe all this universe hopping was taking just as big a toll on his body as it was on his mind. The dog had moved closer to Dan, while one cat walked away sullenly as the other nudged Dan’s side several times. He took the time to collect himself, wiping his bloody hands and mouth on his shirt. The black material almost masked the stain, but the smell, it lingered.

He couldn’t get side tracked. He needed to get back to his Phil and his world, now more than ever. After everything, he could try to leave again now, find his world quicker but he wasn’t sure his body could take another jump to another world, that and curiosity about this life and world seemed to grip him.

He crawled from the bed and stood. The dog sprung to life after him, yipping and running about. Another fat and sullen cat sat in the far corner of the room rubbing against the papered bamboo door. It had one eye and an untrusting gaze. Dan wondered what had caused this version of himself to have such a menagerie of animals. It looked as though he had woken in an anime or a Ghibli film, it was beautiful. Almost beautiful. It was spoiled now, by all the blood. It looked like a beautiful crime scene.

For a moment, he questioned if he was not only in another world but another time altogether. He was in Japan, that was certain. Dan had been once before with Phil but homes weren’t like this. They were the same as a cramped London apartment, this was magical. He pulled out his phone.  He got Wi-Fi. It wasn’t too far off his own time then. He looked about the room trying to find some other identifying markers.

He opened the sliding doors and moved out to the enclosed balcony, his jaw dropping at the sight, a flowing hot spring. A mother fucking hot spring. He had died and gone to fucking heaven.

The smallest of the cats rubbed against him, running in and out between his legs. Dan leant down to pet the thing. Maybe staying here for just a little while longer wouldn’t kill him.

The dog ran through into the next room and Dan, perplexed followed, finding a kitchen. Of course, he was hungry. Dan took to feeding the animals, the dog gratefully lapping at Dan's face while the cats were slightly less grateful. Dan ruffled the dog's fur, glancing at the name tag draped around his neck.

"Cujo?" Dan mused, using the animals name. It seemed pleased, beginning to yap before running off to its meal.

He checked the other creatures, the friendliest of the cats, the one which kept brushing against his legs was called Muu, while the solitary one was Yon and the largest, one eyed mammoth of a cat was Pluto. He only vaguely understood the references to the names. He was unsure he knew much about this version of himself. This time he didn't seem to have Phil to help him figure out who he was.

Dan set to cleaning the blood from the room, taking slightly longer than usual as he had to locate his cleaning equipment. It took a while to get the place spotless, the animals were busy eating. He quietly decided to stay, just long enough so that he no longer felt ill. He needed to give his body time or he feared he wouldn't be able to carry on much longer. 

Dan set the cleaning gear on the benchtop with the animal food and noticed a well thought out planner in a language Dan couldn’t speak buried under a sea of art supplied and Copic markers. He looked at something, which had been recently circled in violent red. According to the time, that’s where he should be now. He looked the word over again and again.

図書館

It didn’t mean anything and yet it did. Dan knew that he could understand it. The Dan in this world must have been a far better linguist than himself. Break it down he thought. Knowing somehow, he could muddle through it. He scribbled above it,

としょ かん

“Toshokan”

He read, not sure how his mind was fathoming it but it was. Fuck. But what did it mean? What did it mean?

Library.

His brain clicked. He didn’t question it. This Dan needed to be at a library at this time in the morning and something about it seemed very important, but he needed to find Phil. He couldn’t get side-tracked, but if he didn’t at least go and check it out the curiosity could eat him alive. It was a side quest. He told himself, in times of trouble it always helped to speak in video game terminology. As soon as he found out, he would keep trying to get back to his own world.

He set out, getting dressed into fresh clothes and fumbling out of the flat. He found himself lost in twisting hallway after twisting hallway until he finally found an exit. He stumbled out into the bustling street, standing far taller than most, it wasn’t unusual but today he felt like he stuck out even more, like everyone could tell he was a man out of his element.

He picked up fragments of conversation and for once he understood them. He shouldn’t be able to, but he did. Turned around trying to take note of the building he had existed.

Nara Ryokan Onsen.

He picked up fragments of conversation and for once he understood them. He shouldn’t be able to, but he did. He turned around trying to take note of the building he had exited.

Nara Ryokan Onsen.

He would have to remember that. At least he knew where he was. Nara. He had a vague memory of the place, last time they hadn’t visited. Though the people he and Phil were staying with talked highly of it for tourists. It was on the way to Kyoto.

He followed the signs, trying to find the library. He passed a temple, surprised to find wild deer, some beautiful and majestic, others straggly and clearly overfed, walking amongst tourists. The air smelled of incense and deer mange. It was a pungent mix. He wanted to stay longer but knew he would just be wasting more time. He didn't have the time to be a tourist but his body still felt weak, stomach unsettled.

He took his time, through windings streets and people speaking in strange half-familiar tongues. He arrived outside the library, as though his body knew where to go. He wondered if the longer he stayed in the one place the more of his other self he would know as if after time the two would become one.

Outside was a middle-aged Japanese man, holding a stern look and a clipboard. He caught Dan’s eye and his shoulders seemed to slightly loosen, relief filling his face. He spoke to him in Japanese, but Dan understood. It took time, as though his mind were almost buffering, trying to recall information which wasn’t truly his own.

“You’re late,” The man had noted.

“I wasn’t feeling well.” The man only seemed to fake sympathy.

“Well, you have a signing in half an hour, so you better hope you’re feeling better soon.” Dan simply nodded.

A signing? For a book, he would assume. He supposed that in this world he really was a writer and if he were there for a signing he felt entirely out of depth as he had no information on his book, then again, one thing he had learnt that day was his extensive talent for making things up when he understood nothing.

He followed the man into a back room, mindlessly looking about the place. He knew enough from his and Phil’s book signing to understand how things worked. He saw a cluster of graphic novels split into several dozen piles, each pile standing at about half a meter tall. Dan's jaw hung slack as his eyes took them in. Black ink bled from the pages while pops of blues and reds caught his attention.

He quickly rushed over and began skimming through them, trying to learn enough that he could fake it in this universe, take intel, as it were. Dan couldn’t draw, no more than a crude sketch but this version of himself was on a whole other level. Dark ink and vibrant colours mingled into an intriguing and somewhat gruesome illustrated chaos.

All the humans were drawn in such an interesting stylistic way. Dan knew nothing of art so he was unsure what words to use to describe it. He opened to a page within the middle of the novel, seeing a boy, high cheekbones, cut like a razor, hollow cheeks, lacklustre, sleepless eyes, all drawn in thick black ink, apart from his eyes. His eyes were vibrant blue and wide, facing down some twisted creature, looking as though it had fallen from the pits of his nightmares and oozed onto the page.

Dan didn’t have enough time to read the book so he flipped to the back section where readers could ‘learn about the author’. The author needed to learn about the author.

_Daniel Howell (English born) moved to Tokyo at age 18 because of an internship with Studio Ghibli, working under Hayao Miyazak. He later found his passion for work of horror inspired by writers such as Steven King and graphic novelists such as Junji Ito. He has stated the influence of his latest graphic novel from the western comic ‘Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth’ as it heavily influences his use of mixed media arts, combining ink and watercolour. He is currently working between studios, having written and illustrated this novel while working between Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nara._

Dan found himself humming softly as he took this information in, surprised that this person was so successful and so far disconnected from his own self, yet still him. He shared a name and a face. Dan wondered if that was all it took for someone to be ‘him’. Being trapped in a tangled web of realities made him start to question what made him ‘him’ at all. How could someone be so far removed from who he was and still be Dan?

Dan flipped to the first page, looking at the acknowledgments. He couldn’t help but smile ever so slightly as he read it over, immediately knowing who it was talking about.

_To blue boy, I hope you don’t mind me making room for you in my world. D.H._

Dan just knew. He thought back to the image he had drawn and the familiarity of the features and he knew. He supposed he and Phil couldn’t live too separately from one another in any world.

“Time to go out front,” Instructed the middle-aged man in the suit.

It didn’t sound like Dan had any other feasible option but to go out. He was instantly greeted with a sea of smiling faces and a line that stretched out the door and far into the streets. He allowed himself an awkward, one-handed wave before he was lead to a set of table and chairs in front of the queue. It was there he saw the blue boy.

“Hey stranger,” Dan beamed, seeing none other than Phil Lester standing at the front of the line. His mere presence made Dan infinitely more comfortable, even if it wasn’t his own. It was a familiar face.

“Hey, I know I already went to the signing in Tokyo and Kyoto… and Osaka but I figured if I’ve gone to all the others, might as well…” Dan was smiling widely.

He felt proud of this universe’s version of himself, more proud than he had been at seeing the sheer volume of people that had lined up just to get a book signed. Phil being proud of something Dan did instantly made him feel validated. It was almost pitiful that this was what it took for Dan to truly feel proud of something.

He always looked to Phil for validation. A video was only good if Phil thought it was, an idea was only worth doing if Phil said it was. The only flaw in this was that Phil seemed to think every idea Dan had was worth pursuing, even the bad ones. He would always help Dan find a way to twist it into something salvageable.  Dan tried his best to do the same in return but Phil didn't often need him in that way. He was confident with what he should pursue and what he wanted. The second part sent a twinge through Dan's body because Phil was sure of everything. He was sure of his words. He wasn't sure of Dan, in his ideas yes, but not in his emotions. Dan shoved this thought down.

Dan remembered a lazy afternoon sprawled out on his and Phil's living room floor flipping through idea after idea in one of his little notepads, ending up throwing it out of pure frustration. Phil had sighed, pausing the video game he had been playing on the main television to sit down beside Dan, handing him back his notebook and questioned,

"Why did you throw it away?"

"Because all my ideas are shit." Phil was already rolling his eyes.

"They aren't, you just need to have more faith in yourself, Dan-"

"Maybe you just have a bias because I'm your best friend," Dan argued.

Phil was as sober and stoic as a monk, sitting there beside Dan, who in that moment had almost been fuming with self-loathing.  He had moments like this more often than not, but this was one of the worst Dan could remember off the top of his head. Phil had let out a deep sigh and laid himself beside Dan, rolling on his side so they could face one another.

"If ever there is a tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think," Phil quoted without missing a beat.

"Did you just quote Winnie the Pooh at me?" Dan had questioned, but that time he had been smiling.

Dan had gone back to working but he could have sworn, even now thinking back to the memory that Phil had finished the quote, quietly adding, just loud enough for Dan to hear,

"and loved more than you know."

That had been all it took to get him out of that dark place and now, in this moment, in this strange world, Dan felt as though he really needed Phil to talk him down. He supposed he had this Phil, who would have to do.

“I’m glad you came,” Dan exhaled because he was. He always would be. Looking at this version of Phil still, made his chest ache.

“Yeah, well… number one Dan trash and all that,” Dan’s smile was beyond measure.

“Time to move along,” One of the people behind him informed and Dan quickly scribbled on Phil’s book.

“I’ll wait for you after… if that’s okay? I mean I don’t want to push…” Dan was already rolling his eyes.

“I wrote a book for you, of course, I will stay and hang out with you after.”

Phil nodded, about to leave but he lingered, something flickering behind his eyes. He remembered that look mirrored in his own Phil’s eyes only moments before he had left that morning, left his universe.

“Are you okay?” Concern, Dan supposed.

He wasn’t going to think about the night before or when he had left or the reasons why Phil had looked concerned that morning. He was pretending like it didn’t happen and it was going well. So, he pushed it back down, told himself that when he got home he would have so much to tell Phil that he wouldn’t have the time to dwell on the night before and the events that had transpired. It felt like a million years had passed since that time. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Time was relative when he was jumping about with it.

“I’m fine, rough sleep.” Phil nodded, but he didn’t look as though he believed Dan.

Still, he nodded and moved on. Dan was faced with a new person, someone he didn’t know. For the most part, he was in his element. He was used to making small talk with people, a young boy who had travelled quite the way, spoke quickly in a flurry of excited Japanese to Dan, talking about how horror novels were the superior media to films because films could use cheap tricks like jump scares while in books they had to build likeable characters and suspense. Dan could only half follow the conversation, surprising himself to no end that he could understand the words pooling from the man’s lips as it was a language he normally couldn’t fathom. He almost wished he was his other self for this boy. He felt like an imposter.

From the corner of his eye, Dan saw another familiarity, though it may have been a trick of the light. Someone was lurking just beyond his view. Dan couldn’t help but hold the notion he was being watched, not just by the line of people. This was a different kind of observation, this kind sunk into his bones and made a home there. He looked around, caught familiar green eyes. PJ. From this world, he supposed or possibly supposed not. His eyes were knowing, cutting through Dan as if trying to coax him out into transparency. He knew Dan didn’t belong.

Dan stood abruptly causing a scene. Everyone’s eyes jerked to him and PJ took a step forward from his nook half huddled behind a bookshelf. Dan took a step back then another, almost stumbling.

“I need a break,” He insisted to the man behind him, he looked perplexed but nodded.

Dan darted off, feeling drastically unfit for any means of running at the best of times, let alone on an empty stomach and foggy head. One set of footsteps was hot on his heels, closer than the space PJ should have humanly been able to pass in that amount of time. Dan dared a look back and saw Phil, awkwardly shuffling, half running to keep up. Dan slowed just enough for Phil to catch up before picking up the pace again, ducking in between shelves, looking for a back exit.

“What’s going on?” Phil’s voice rang, almost too close to his ear for comfort.

“I need to get some air,” Dan told a half truth. Phil moved slightly faster, so he could lead the way, finding the closest exit in half the time Dan would have managed to do it.

Soon they were exiting into the street behind the library. Phil was looking Dan over perplexed as he continued to move from one street to the next. They found themselves in the midst of a marketplace, filled to the brim with tourists, several to every local.

It was suddenly hot, bodies pushing up against Dan’s, Phil being one of them. He was looking at Dan as though he had gone totally insane. Through the crowd, Dan caught another glance of PJ, who was hot on their tails.

Dan found his hand reaching over for Phil’s, the other boy gripping back. His chest was heaving just as quickly as Dan’s was. They weren’t made to run but they needed to keep going. Dan felt the lactic acid build and bubble in his legs, causing them to shake. He locked eyes with this Phil, then dragged him deeper into the crowd.

It was a sea of stalls, colours ranging from neutral shades of warm browns to brilliant reds and golds. People shoved against Dan, his fingers tightened around Phil’s his nails digging slightly into his flesh. Run. They had to run. He couldn’t see PJ anymore.

“Dan what are we doing?” Phil questioned but Dan didn’t have time to explain.

He cut out of the marketplace via a gap between two competing tourist stalls, one selling Daruma dolls and the other selling hand-painted fans. He almost tugged Phil’s arm from his frame with the sudden jerky movement. This seemed like a good move until the two of them found themselves trapped at a dead-end street. PJ caught up to them, running in a tight-fisted, burning flurry of flailing limbs.

“For fuck’s sake, why are you running?” A voice boomed rounding the corner with them.

“Can you stop running Dan?” PJ panted causing Dan to pause, thinking for a moment before he let his feet skid to a stop. Anyway, there wasn’t anywhere to go.

“Why are you chasing me? Can you stop chasing me?” Dan challenged.

This Phil looked from Dan to PJ, his face twisting in confusion.

“We need to talk,” PJ began,

“Alone.” He stressed looking over at this world’s version of Phil.

“I have been running through all times of different bloody universes trying to get you. I know where Phil is.”

This version of Phil looked at PJ as if he had gone mad.

“I’m here, obviously.”

PJ’s eyes locked on Dan’s eyes, burning intensely. Dan was right about PJ knowing something. He still wasn’t sure if he should be trusted but he felt as if he knew this PJ. He seemed like the one back in his world. 

“What are you going on about? I’m right here. Dan, I think we should-”

It took everything in Dan to choose PJ over this version of Phil, only because there was a slither of a possibility that he could be led to his own version of Phil. He took a step closer to PJ.

“I’m listening,” He began, trying to sound sure of himself, but there was questioning in his tone.

“We know each other… don’t we?” Dan took a shot in the dark. This Phil was looking at both boys as if they were mental.

“We know each other very well and if you give me a little time to explain and a lot of room to move, I think I just might be able to get you where you need to be.”

"And where do I need to be?" Dan's voice was no more than a whisper.

"Back to your world. Back to your Phil too if I can help it."

Okay. Now Dan was listening.


	8. Love and Friendship: The Fine Line

**_Some people care too much. I think it's called love.  
\- A.A. Milne _ **

Phil Lester woke up face down. He was in a bed. Familiar, yet foreign. He was alone.

Daniel Howell opened his eyes finding that he was lying on his back and facing the sky. He was on the ground. He was alone. Until he wasn’t.

Phil was in love, but that didn’t matter now.

Dan was in love. He was trying to get to a time and a place where it mattered.

***

Dan lay looking up at the sky, the sound of oncoming car horns shocking him into a standing position. He had been lying down in the middle of the street, like your garden variety idiot. PJ was nowhere to be seen. He had spent the better part of half an hour, in the previous universe explaining to Dan what was going on, what PJ was, what his and Phil’s predicament was, and explaining that Phil was also somewhere out there, just as lost as Dan had been. Dan was still sketchy on he and Phil being ‘destined’ to be together. Star crossed lovers shit was for teen movies and hopeless romantics. As a realist, Dan knew that all star crossed lovers tended to end up somewhere, face down, dead in a ditch. Two households both alike in fucking stupidity. 

Surely God, the universe, the cosmic powers that be, whatever the fuck; had better things to do than making sure Dan got laid. He almost felt contrived for condensing Phil to that. He was so much more, without any means of romance or romantic attraction, Phil was still so fucking much more.

PJ had got Dan to move on to the next universe (putting things politely and leaving out the rock, the river and the drowning), while PJ attempted to sleep. He promised that if it was done right, at the same time, in the same place, they would end up together in the next universe. Dan was making his way off the road when he heard a voice behind him bellow,

“Watch out for Christ’s sake I’m walking here!” There was a thundering symphony of car horns.

PJ came jogging across the road to Dan. His cheeks flushed pink with the effort. His middle finger erected to the cars. Dan had to hold the scoff rising in the back of his throat as his friend jogged up beside him.

“Easy peasy,” PJ assured shooting Dan a smug smirk.

“Something tells me I shouldn’t take your word for it, so how do we know this is where Phil is?” PJ’s face seemed to fall.

“We don’t.”

“We don’t?” Dan repeated.

“I mean… I can get the gist of where people are, but it’s like throwing a rock in a pond but not seeing where it landed. I have to go off the ripples in the water. I can get there eventually…”

Dan kicked at the air in pure frustration causing the blood to bubble in his veins. He gritted his teeth and let out a loud and frustrated sound, something between a grunt and a scream. There were no words in it, just guttural frustration.

“Mother fucking eventually?” His voice raised an octave.

“Better than mother fucking never,” PJ challenged.

“I could punch you in the face and not feel sorry.”

“You would feel a little sorry.”

“Only because it would hurt my hand.”

“Harsh.”

PJ was now looking down at his feet, trying to think of what to do. Dan wondered if the boy even knew what world they were in and how to tell which worlds were ‘close’ and which were ‘far’. PJ was going off ripples in the water while Dan couldn’t even see a fucking lake. He was exhausted and home only seemed like a concept.

“We could always try texting, it’s not very fast or effective but neither is this- so I suppose it’s worth a try. Plus, I don’t know how much more travelling you could take.”

Dan was about to question what PJ meant when the boy pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, placed it in Dan’s hand then guided his hand to his nose. It was only then Dan noticed he was bleeding like a cocaine addict on a bad bender.

“I don’t think he’s in this world but you aren’t in any condition to go to the next one,” PJ’s voice was even again.

“How can you tell he isn’t here without even looking?”

“It’s just a feeling. A feeling of ‘other’ I suppose. Like something is amiss or out of place. The only thing that feels out of place here is you. Maybe having you here is messing with my juju.”

Dan didn’t understand, not really so he just nodded looking down at his phone. He took longer than necessary to construct a text, not sure when he became so hyper aware of what he said to Phil, the way he acted. Okay. He was lying. He knew exactly when it happened. He just didn’t like to think about it.

_Phil! PJ and I are on our way. Is there anything there that could give us a clue where you are? – Dan_

He hoped that was enough. He still wasn’t whole heartedly sure how to react anymore. PJ read the text over his shoulder and nodded, noting that it seemed okay. He hit send but knew Phil wouldn’t get the message until they skipped across worlds again. His nose had stopped bleeding so Dan offered the handkerchief to PJ but the other boy screwed up his nose,

“Keep it.”

Dan pocketed it and moved with PJ to the closest coffee shop. It looked like they would have to wait in this world for a while. The two sat down, rattling off some generic orders only half interested in the coffee. Dan wasn’t sure if he should try to eat something after throwing up the last time, but he hadn’t eaten in what could have been days. His stomach was tying itself in knots. He ordered a muffin.

“I think I have detected a flaw in our plan,” PJ whispered, crossing and uncrossing his legs.

“What would that be?”

A waitress walked past, flashing the two an uninterested smile. Dan didn’t know whether to describe it as polite or obligatory. She paused to pass their coffees and muffin.  Dan guessed she was pretty enough and she was staring at him intently. Dan wasn’t interested. He took a sip of coffee and then a bite of his muffin, turning his attention to PJ.

“Phil can get our text but to send one back, he’s going to have to jump again. Which means he won’t be where he was when he sent the text.” Dan hung his head.

“So, we’re fucked.”

“I mean, a little optimism wouldn’t kill you, also if we are so fucked you might as well get fucked while we wait.”

PJ tilted his head over to the woman, who was still watching the two. This felt like a test. PJ didn’t talk that way about girls and Dan hadn’t in a very long time. Most of all he didn’t feel any urge to. It felt wrong. He screwed up his nose.

“She’s a girl, not an object and I’m not interested. I don’t want to.”

“What about her?”

PJ asked pointing to a young woman with strawberry blonde hair behind the counter. She had a dusting of freckles over her cheeks. Dan had a soft spot for freckles and gingers.

“No thank you.” Dan was adamant.                       

PJ angled his chair so he could better survey the spot where they were sitting and smirked. He pointed to the far corner of the room. It was a man, hunched over, scribbling something in a notebook.

“Him?” Dan couldn’t see his face but something made him pause. He simply shook his head.

The boy looked up. Blue eyes. Pointed, angular nose. Scooped raven fringe. Phil.

“No,” Dan grumbled seeming to surprise PJ.

“Why are we playing this game?” Dan asked, patience thin.

“When I told you that you and Phil had to get together you just scoffed. Said it was bullshit. After everything today- after everything ever you can’t think it’s bullshit. I’m trying to help you out. Get you in touch with your feelings.”

PJ nudged Dan’s shoulder. He gritted his teeth and sighed shaking his head. He went back to eating his muffin. PJ didn’t understand. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel that way about Phil. Things were just… complicated.

“I don’t want to get with that Phil because he’s not my Phil. It feels like…”

“Cheating?” PJ supplied and Dan picked at his food.

“I guess.”

“So why do you think it’s bullshit?”

Dan didn’t want to say it out loud because saying it out loud made it real. PJ placed his foot over Dan’s tapping it several times over as if trying to coerce him into speaking. He wasn’t going to. Dan looked away. PJ tapped his foot again. Dan knocked it away with his own.

“Because,” He hissed through gritted teeth.

“Because…?” PJ still pushed.

“I like him. I know I like him. I’ve liked him for… forever really. Though honestly, it took me a few years to keep up. I always knew he made me feel… A kind of way I had never felt before. At the start, I thought maybe that’s just what it was like to have a true, proper best mate. He was the first I ever had. I know… Depressing as shit but true.”

PJ stopped irritating him and instead began to nod. Taking an intrigued slurp from his mug. A brow raised as if quietly asking him to continue.

“Later I guessed it was just… him being my favourite person. I don’t know how else I would describe it. He got me. Like he really fucking got me and that's what everyone in the world wants right? To be understood, to have someone who has seen you at your worst. Seen you at early hours of the morning and late hours at night, seen you laughing over stupid shit, that they get and seen you crying over stupid shit and even if they don’t get it they get how to make you feel better and then…”

Dan didn’t want to say it so PJ shifted from friend to therapist. They might as well have been sitting in some dapper room, looking at ink blots, reclining back in chairs and talking about his childhood. That’s the way this felt.

“Something shifted didn’t it, between the two of you?”

“People started picking up on shit. They started to think we were a couple and I… I just didn’t know how to feel. Up until then, I hadn’t thought of it that way but then I did… start thinking about it like that. I realised that I wanted us to be like that, but we weren’t and Phil always knew everything about everything so if he liked me, he would already know. He wasn’t slow like me. He wouldn’t have to have millions of people tell him he’s in love with his best friend to actually realise it. So, we started to fight for a bit… not proper fights but things were different. I tried to separate myself from him for a bit because I had given him my everything without realising it and I was trying to get myself back because now I knew he could break me... my heart. My feelings. Me. If he wanted to he could break me. I knew he didn’t feel the same way.”

Dan had never talked about this to anyone. He had never said it out loud. Now that he started, the words wouldn’t stop, not even if he wanted them too. He kept talking and talking, the words spewing from his lips and pooling at his feet. He was no longer eating or drinking he was just talking. Talking and shaking. Why was he shaking?

“So, you don’t think he feels the same way?” PJ asked, he too having abandoned his beverage.

“After everything you have seen in all these other worlds you don’t think Phil feels the same about you as you do about him?”

“They are other Phils. Not mine. I know mine. I know he doesn’t. I tried I…” At this PJ rolled his eyes.

“And you don’t think he is just as freaked out as you about the way he feels? I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t think you felt the same. No homo Howell and all that.”

PJ didn’t know what happened. Dan had put himself out on a limb. Phil had slammed the door in his face. It stung but it got the message across. Dan got the message loud and clear.

“I showed him how I felt, he didn’t-”

“Maybe he didn’t know how to react because he was just as sure you didn’t like him as you are ‘sure’ he didn’t like you.”

Dan just went silent. PJ took a sip of coffee again, seeming content with himself. Dan didn’t want to let his mind mull over it because it was making sense. It was giving him hope. He didn’t want to have his hope crushed again. He just wanted to think of Phil as his friend because that’s what they knew. That’s what they were good at. That’s what worked.

PJ let Dan stay silent, continuing the rest of his drink in a quiet refrain. He finally placed down his coffee mug and gave Dan another once over, as if assessing his stability. Dan felt fine. Though fine was a relative term. He still felt as though his world was on a tilt.

“Okay, better get to the next world. Text Phil, tell him- we’ll work out how to find him. Don’t worry about it okay? We will. Cross my heart.”

Dan wanted to believe PJ was telling the truth. Dan knew PJ was telling his version of the truth but PJ was an optimist. It was going to be near impossible to find Phil and if he and PJ got separated there would be no way they could find one another again. Dan felt as though they were an ouroboros, destined to keep chasing one another, keep eating their own tails without finding a true beginning or end.

“I think I know someone who might be able to help us get there quicker. An associate of mine. Kind of. Trust me, just this once okay?”

PJ gave Dan’s shoulder a solid pat, possibly trying to bring him back down to planet earth. Dan mustered a smile and gave a jerky nod, standing up.

“Alright- will do.” He assured though it was clear to the both of them that his heart wasn’t in it.

He set out with PJ to find a new world, hoping to find something worth holding on to.

***

Phil Lester rolled onto his side and saw a small bouquet of sunflowers placed within a large vase, balanced precariously on the bedside table. For a moment he felt pained, then nothing. It was odd. He didn’t have the time to question it before his phone buzzed, twice. The first message read:

_Phil! PJ and I are on our way. Is there anything there that could give us a clue where you are? – Dan_

The second read:

_PJ and I just realised that you couldn’t reply to this without changing worlds. Guess this is going to be harder than we thought. Don’t worry, we’ll be there soon – Dan_

Phil couldn’t help but think that PJ had made Dan add the last part. Don’t worry. Dan was the type to always worry and wasn’t often the one trying to be a calming influence. It just wasn’t his personality. Phil supposed all he could do was stay put for a while.

He sat up and began picking the dead leaves from the sunflower wondering where on earth the Dan from this world was and hoping that his own would find him soon.

***

Dan found himself in the next universe with PJ already by his side. He supposed they had timed things better this time around. He found himself in a house, looking about the room as if expecting to see some familiarity. He didn’t. Not really. He saw things that he could imagine himself or even Phil having but it wasn’t there flat. This was a long hallway in a house with no familiarity. There was a window at the end of the hallway showing that they weren’t in London. The scenery was somehow slightly familiar. It vaguely reminded him of where he had grown up.

Dan heard a mix between a whine and a pant at his feet. He looked down, to see an old dog lying close to his feet, looking up at him with enthusiasm. PJ bent over to ruffle the creature's fur and it treated PJ as an old friend. Dan was surprised that when he went to pat the creature it treated him the same way.

“So where is this friend of yours?” Dan asked while PJ hushed him and made his way to one of the doors closest to the window.

PJ wrapped his knuckles against the door’s wooden frame and after a beat, he stood back and Dan took half a step forward. A head peeked out. It was a young boy. He couldn’t tell his exact age, though he looked as if he could be in his very early teens, though he was small for his age. His face looked older than his height. His eyes were a deep brown, hair slightly too long, his nails were painted a chipping black. He was cradling his ear in a mass of fluffy white towel, slowly turning a shade of red. The room smelled of blood.

“Dad, what the hell I thought you were at work?” His voice cracked out as he slammed the door in Dan’s face.

Dan stood, looking wide eyed before looking over his shoulder at PJ his face overflowing with confusion. That was his ‘associate’? Why had he called Dan dad?

“I think we may have caught him at a bad time,” PJ observed.

“No shit, would you care to explain why your associate is apparently my son?” PJ shrugged and tapped on the door again.

“Long story, that mostly has to do with you and Phil completely fucking up this universe.”

He banged harder on the door.

“James? It’s PJ.”

The door flew open again and the boy smiled widely, still using one hand to nurse his wounded ear. That was something Dan also had many questions about. He didn’t think he was going to get anything anytime soon.

“Uncle PJ?” The boy’s voice rose with excitement.

PJ opened his arms for an embrace, the boy rushing over into his arms, burying his face into PJ’s chest before hissing and pulling back holding his ear.

“What on earth have you done to your ear?” PJ questioned.

“He isn’t my dad, is he?” The boy, James, avoided the question entirely.

“How did you guess?” PJ asked.

James tilted his head, looking Dan over while Dan did the same. He was trying to look at his features for familiarities, while they shared similar enough hair and eye colour he didn’t think they were really related. The boy’s hair was darker than his own, as were his eyes and as far as his ethnicity he looked as though he was of Asian descent. He wasn’t knowledgeable enough to guess which one.

“Dad would know what I was doing and dad would be yelling at me.”

Dan folded his arms over his chest as a small act of defiance.

“I wouldn’t yell at you,” He defended. He wasn’t going to be an arse of a father. He had some experience with that.

“Yeah you would,” The boy shot back before PJ rolled his eyes and tried to inspect the wound.

“Before we get down to business I’ll get some ice for you. Seriously what on earth were you doing?” James squirmed uncomfortably before sighing and confessing,

“I wanted to get my ear pierced to look cool, but dad said no so I tried to do it myself.”

Defiant little bastard. Dan was not looking forward to being a parent, having to deal with a young and wayward teen any time soon. PJ nodded telling Dan to look after the boy until he got back. Dan could work out the dynamics. PJ was the fun uncle. Dan didn’t know how to be a father, but he could at least attempt to be a responsible adult. His younger brother had been that age not too long ago.

“Let’s get you sitting down, don’t want you to faint or something,” Dan tried to coax the child over to his bed, sitting down cross legged with him. He sighed quietly and took a deep breath.

“So why did you really do it? It had to be more than just wanting to look cool.”

The boy looked down and scowled, not answering Dan. Again, he sighed. This was going to be harder than he thought. Dan needed to try another strategy.

“I think you look cool enough as you are, your nail polish is pretty cool.”         

The boy shrugged.

“And I like your hair, that’s really cool.”

The boy brushed his hair from his eyes and looked up.

“You actually like it?” He questioned and Dan smiled widely, thanking God he was getting somewhere.

“I do. This guy I knew, he had hair like yours when we first met. Some people thought it was a little different, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever.”

At this the boy looked up at Dan curiously, as if asking him to talk more. Dan didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what the boy wanted. He was a YouTuber for Christ’s sakes. This wasn’t in his credentials. He still felt like a kid himself. Maybe Phil would know what to do, but not Dan. Dan was fucking lost.

“Was that guy dad... my other dad?” Dan furrowed his brow, taking only a second to put the pieces together. He then nodded.

“Yeah, it was.”

“You don’t talk about him anymore.” The boy noted, worrying away at a hole in his jeans.

Dan suddenly got a sinking feeling as he slowly started to piece things together. PJ had said they were messing up universes, and Dan was apparently the type of dad to yell at his kid, and even more worrying, leave a young teen at home, by himself, for god knows how long.

“What happened?” Dan asked quietly.

“Well… You thought he killed himself, dad, which is pretty damn bleak really. I knew…  he didn't, I just remember it not being my papa. Not really. It doesn’t make sense but I just knew, so I spent ages trying to work it out, trying to get my dad back. I knew I could get him back. Then uncle PJ explained what happened. Is that why you’re here? Are you two trying to fix it?”

Dan scooted slightly closer and nodded, brushing the boy’s hair from his eyes. They needed to fix things, not just for him and his version of Phil but for every version of them and the ones close to them, the worlds they had completely shattered.

“Yeah, we are. Now would you like to tell me why you really decided to do that? You had to be pretty determined to want to shove a needle in your own ear. That’s more than just wanting to look cool bud. I will tell you some more about your other dad if you do,” James actually softened slightly and gave a shy nod.

“My best friend, she’s been hanging out with all these older guys because they have cars and can drive and shit-” Dan gave him a pointed look.

“Would I let you say shit?” He asked already knowing the answer.

“Probably not,” James mumbled beginning to pick at a loose thread in his jeans

“And she thinks there so cool, but they’re just prats.” Another pointed look.

“They are though.” James argued.

“And they have spacers and snakebites. She said they were so cool. I want to be cool too so she’ll realise they are just… prats.”

Dan listened mostly keeping quiet, just nodding every now and again. This was a big deal for him. To Dan he had been there and done that, had a million times worse, but for James, having a slightly absent best friend felt like the world was ending. Dan had been there. He remembered when he was younger, hating how his parents, and older people in general tended to negate his feelings because he was ‘too young’ to know what he was talking about.

“So, you think that if you pierce your ears and try to fit in with those older kids your best friend will hang around with you again?”

James wasn’t looking up but he nodded.

“I just want us to hang out again. I miss her and she looks at them like they are so cool and I just…” He groaned quietly pulling one of his pillows to his chest. It clicked and Dan knew what was going on.

 

“You like her, don’t you?” A blush rose in James cheeks and he buried his face into the pillow.

“Maybe, but she doesn’t like me. That’s the problem. She likes hot prats who drive cars and aren’t all messed up.”

Oh, to be young and angst ridden. He might not look too much like Dan but his mannerisms were there.  He thought of how to reply and then suddenly understood why PJ had taken them there, to this world, at this time. It wasn’t inconvenience, it was plan. That must have been why PJ getting ice was taking longer than writing War and Peace. He was trying to teach Dan something.

“Have you talk to her about how you feel?” The young boy looked horrified.

“No way, she’s my best friend. If I say I like her it will mess everything up. She is going to get married to a prat and have pretty but pratty babies and be happy and I’ll just be forever alone.”

Like father, like son he supposed the boy had caught his sense of melodrama.

she isn’t just going to stop being your best friend if you have been friends for so long. Close friends don’t just give up on one another over something so silly. Your other dad and I have been best friends forever. We wouldn’t let anything as silly as a fight or something mess that up. Trust me, we have fought some… A lot really from time to time but that doesn’t mean we love each other any less.”

James looked up, eyes watering, scooting slightly closer.

“Do you really love each other?” Dan sighed, not really knowing how to answer, so he gave the one he knew the boy wanted to hear.

“Yeah bud, we do.”

“You don’t talk about him. You don’t talk about anything. You’re always working in the snake pit with the rest of the twazacks. It’s like you don’t even care.”

“I care.” Dan didn’t even need to think about that. He cared. In any world he knew that he would care about his child.

“You try, most of the time,” James supplied.

“But you’re just sad a lot.”

Dan thought this over and nodded, not knowing what more he could say. He cautioned a hug. Phil would know what to say. He supposed that they would have made a good team if they were to ever have kids. That was a big if. It felt so far away from what they were now. 

“Sometimes we have pizza and watch anime when you aren’t working though- that’s pretty cool, you used to read me Winnie the Pooh,” he whispered, voice muffled by Dan’s chest.

“I did?” Dan asked just as PJ re-entered the room.

He looked between the two of them, handing over a frozen bag of peas he had scrounged from the depths of the house's freezer, buried under stacks of microwave meals and frozen leftovers. James cautiously placed it to his ear then looked at PJ.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” James asked him, seeming to try and put on his best, ‘business’ voice.

“Well, you are better at checking my comings and goings than I am, you have a knack for patterns and you have been keeping track of the places I come from. We are trying to find out where Phil ended up and I thought you might have an idea about the process of elimination.”

James seemed to be two steps ahead, moving to his cupboard and pulling out a roll of butcher’s paper, unfurling it and spreading it out across almost the entire length of the room. There were what seemed like hundreds of names, universes, Dan figured, with tallies set beside them- times PJ had visited each, Dan guessed.

This child, young enough to still be learning algebra was trying to work out a logic to the comings and goings of all these universes, just so he could fix his own world. He was far more determined than Dan had ever been. He felt a swell of pride in his chest and was unsure as to why it was placed there. 

Dan moved to sit on the floor, where James now resided, pulling out a rainbow of marker pens. He and Dan talked through all the universes he had been through, PJ supplied the ones he had been to while looking for Dan and where Phil had been last.

“The places you go too, seem to repeat themselves, if you go to a place once, especially if something is messed up, it’s like it wants you to go back and fix it. I think if he is going to be anywhere, he will be somewhere someone has been today,” James supplied still scribbling down places they had been.

PJ’s mind mulled this over and then he began to nod. He must be thinking of his ripple theory, the one that was far out of both Dan’s and James’ comprehension. He then nodded.

“I know where we have to go,”

Dan felt a thrill run through his spine. He gave one last look at the boy and sighed, his tender side getting the better of him. He shyly pulled the boy into a hug.

 “If you go, that means my dad will…” His voice trailed off. This had occurred to Dan.

His heart hurt. It was a kind of wicket pulling from the pit of his stomach to the bottom of his chest as if his body were a guitar and his emotions were strumming him along.

“I know but I’m going to make everything better. I’m going to fix this, okay?” Now he wasn’t just fixing things for himself.

“I don’t want you to go,” James admitted his fingers clutching at the back of Dan’s shirt as if begging him to stay, but him staying wouldn’t fix it. They both knew it.

And so, James let go. He looked at Dan, eyes glazing over with unshed tears. This was in no way fair.

“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever,” Dan quoted, struggling to keep his voice steady.

Stupid fucking Winnie The Pooh.

James gave a watery smile before squaring his shoulders, scrubbing his face and giving a weak and shaky smile.

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard,” James quoted back.

It wasn’t much long later that Dan and PJ were gone. James was alone again. Truly alone.

 


	9. Shiva, the Ouroboros, and the Infinity of Possibilities

**_I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.  
\- Madeline Miller_ **

Dan awoke in the backroom of a record shop. He knew the place as soon as he opened his eyes. It wasn’t home but it was a familiar comfort. He could hear some obscure punk music playing softly through the speakers. He stood, slightly shaky on his feet, and moved like a phantom through the record shop. He wasn’t sure where he was going until he arrived at the opening to the downstairs bedroom, the one which the other Phil had taken him to what seemed like lifetimes ago. He could hear PJ’s footsteps in pursuit a few strides back, he was giving Dan his space. PJ didn’t have to say if for Dan to know. PJ sensed it too.

Phil was here. Dan didn’t know how to describe it. He just knew. He could feel him. It was like a pulling, a sensation of knowing and feeling. He wasn’t in his world, he wasn’t home but he felt the closest he had to home since he had gone.

He stood for a moment in the hallway, thinking and breathing. He was trying to work out how to describe how he knew Phil was here, while also trying to calm the thunderbird in his heart. Even it knew. His mind told his heart and his heart caused his veins to retract all the blood from his body, sending it to his limbs as if he should be ready to run, opposed to moving forward. There was some part of him still thinking of the night before, of the bitter sting of rejection. He couldn’t dwell on that, it was idiotic. Whatever was to happen within the next few moments, he would still be ten times better off with any form of Phil than cowering behind a door like a scared child. He had to fucking pull himself together.

Dan opened the door slightly, testing the waters. Through the slither of a crack, he found a raven-haired boy hunched over, picking at petals of a dying sunflower. Dan knew it was Phil. His Phil. He knew him in this world and the next. The others had his face but they had never been him. They were all imperfect and distorted versions of the anomaly that was Phil Lester. It was as though Dan had been staring at the carnival mirror versions of Phil for so long he had almost forgotten what the real image looked like until he saw the real version of Phil before him. He then questioned how stupid he had been to think of anything else as something even close to him. Dan opened the door fully and stepped in. No time like the present.

“I fucking hate sunflowers.”

Phil spun to face him. His eyes sparked wildfires. There was the same knowing familiarity between both of them now. He shot Dan a brilliant smile, the kind where the corners of his eyes would wrinkle and his mouth would contort into the most brilliant of blinding grins. The sun had returned to the sky. Everything was bright and brilliant and gold.

Phil hadn’t seen Dan coming, hadn’t heard him. At first seeing him, for a fraction of a second, he had almost question if this was the Dan from this universe, not his own, but it couldn’t be. Phil’s heart erupted in a flurry of fevered beats. He didn’t need bright sides in that moment. He didn’t need to chase silver linings he had the whole bloody sky of iridescent sunlight. All the stars had returned to the night sky. This was Dan. His Dan.

Without thinking, Phil pulled him into a hug. It was something more than just contact, it was tight, tighter than either boy could remember hugging before. It was two vices gripping onto one another, two men drowning, clinging to one another opposed to letting go and swimming to the surface, because who would want to live such a life without the other? It was better to drown. This hug felt like drowning. It was all desperate hands gripping at flesh, clothes and hair. They seemed to shift into a comfortable grip and clung there.

Dan was drowning in Phil’s smell. This time everything was right. His hair smelled of the same fruity shampoo that had sat in the bottom of their shower since they had moved into their new flat. It was the one Dan had used on occasion, if he were having a particularly bad day or if Phil was on one of his annual family holidays. It was a calming smell. There was sweetness, with the slight undertones of coffee, the instant kind, which could never smell bitter.

Phil was drowning in Dan’s warmth. He wasn’t sure how the boy always managed to feel so much warmer than the room around them. He sent heat through Phil’s veins and for the first time since that morning, Phil felt alive again.

“I hate you,” He whispered, somehow his face had ended up buried in the crook of Dan’s neck. There was no trace of venom in his voice. He couldn’t even muster false despise.

They had never hugged like this, so close, so long. Neither were complaining. Phil was placing most of his weight on Dan and in turn, Dan was slightly swaying, placing his weight from one foot to the next as he struggled to keep the two upright.

“Hate you too,” Dan shot back his voice proving smooth and lacking any of the sarcastic or sardonic tones Phil had grown accustomed to.

“I thought you died, this morning- I thought…” Phil’s voice and train of thought betrayed him so he didn’t say anything else.

“I’m not,” Dan supplied, knowing that it wasn’t much of a consolation.

“I figured that much, I’m guessing your day has been just as weird as mine?” Phil pulled back slightly to ask and Dan let out a throaty chuckle, dimples showing, one slightly more predominant than the other.

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe. Though there were some cute dogs involved, so I can’t say it all turned out bad.” Phil smiled wider still.

“Did Daniel Doom-and-Gloom Howell just find a bright side?”

Dan pulled back slightly as well, just to get a better look at the other boy. It seemed clear, a kind of unspoken promise that neither wanted to nor were ready to, let go of the other.

“Maybe you have slightly rubbed off on me.”       

“Finally.”

Finally. Dan’s mind and body agreed though he was certain they weren’t referring to the same thing Phil had been.

“I don’t suppose we will ever be able to make a YouTube story time about this,” Phil supplied.

“Not unless you want people to think we’re mental,” Dan quipped.

“Maybe we are. I mean- today was one hell of a day.”

“I honestly don’t think I have the imagination to come up with half of the things I saw today. Your hair in 2009 being one of them, it was the most horrible throwback since double denim.”

Phil found himself teasingly kicking Dan’s shin almost sending both boys tumbling over before they managed to regain their balance.

“Don’t be a dick,” Phil grumbled causing Dan to do a double take.

“Did Phil PG-Rated Lester just curse?”

“I think dick is a PG curse. Maybe you’re just rubbing off on me,” Phil was almost chuckling by the end and suddenly the day didn’t matter. None of the craziness did. Things almost seemed sorted out. He tricked himself for a moment into thinking they were. He knew it wasn’t the case.

“Finally,” Dan breathed out.

Before Phil could muster a witty reply, there was a sound from the doorway, someone clearing their throat. The two uncoiled from one another as if they had been caught in the middle of something taboo, maybe they had. PJ stood in the doorway of the room, leaning against the frame, checking a seemingly invisible watch on his wrist.

“Now, as much as I was enjoying the show guys, I would enjoy it more if I could blow this popsicle stand and get you two back to where you need to be so you can sort out what you both need to sort out.”

He sent a pointed look at both boys. Everyone in the room knew what had to be done but no one was saying it. Saying it for Dan meant putting it out there again, setting his heart of the tip of a pike and waiting for Phil to plunge it in, or remove it. It could go either way.

 Saying it for Phil meant rewriting history, admitting to something that had always been there, just under the surface, waiting to see if the same history was written between the lines of Dan’s book or if Phil would set their own shared history ablaze.

Saying if for PJ meant that he would have to put himself in the middle of something he didn’t want to be in the middle of. Despite everything, he couldn’t play counsellor on this one. He couldn’t tell them how they should behave because then they wouldn’t be shaping their own history, their own universe. They would have to do this on their own. PJ just hoped they could get it right. He yearned for the homely comforts of video games and balance between all the universes. That shouldn’t be too much to ask for.

“I don’t know about anyone else, but I think finally going home sounds like the best news all day,” Phil supplied after a long moment of palpable silence.

“Let’s go home,” Dan agreed with a jerky, nod of his head.

***

Going home was a different matter. Getting the three of them from one world to the next was something they had to sit down and plan. They didn’t talk about much else, it was all business. They had their moment of reunion and now, they were on the home stretch. So close, yet so far.

In the end, they ended up raiding the medicine cabinet, Dan and Phil divvying up several bottles of nondescript pain killers and sleeping medication. Hopefully, it would do the trick. It was such a strange thing, planning and carrying out death, or at least coming close to death with no intent on dying. 

PJ was already setting up his lullaby cube, he had produced from a back room upstairs. Phil couldn’t help but wonder how many of those odd things he had, if he hid several in each world or if they somehow managed to travel with him. He thought it must have been the former. Soft sounds began to echo throughout the room as PJ cranked the handle of the cube.

Phil could hear the soft twinkling of wind chimes in the breeze and the pixilated blips of a Super Mario Brother’s soundtrack. He would later ask Dan what he had heard and Dan had told him he had just heard raining, and Fur Elise. Phil supposed it was subjective. What a strange thing the cube was. Soon a mist of fogged steam began pooling into the room, bubbling forth from the lullaby cube. The three boys tried to fit like Tetris pieces in the one bed Dan and Phil lying side by side, PJ laying lengthways at their feet.

The white roof began to dance above them, coming in and out of focus. Before the sensation could totally take them over they closed their eyes, even PJ. They acted as one, all slowly fading from this universe. Like Shiva, the world was both being created and destroyed before their eyes.

They awoke in another world entirely.

***

It was a particularly cold London night and the air held the familiar chill of possibility.

When Phil opened his eyes, he found himself looking at a familiar scene. He was in the back of a cab, pulled up outside of his and Dan’s flat. The night loomed overhead, a moonless sky, which, save for the fluorescent glow of the London street, left him in complete darkness. Apart from the streetlights, there was next to no light. They were back in his world. His London.

London was sleeping, completely unaware of the way the universe had twisted, bent and spat them out again, back where they had left though it wasn’t when they had left. It was the night of the party before everything had gone wrong. Dan was sleeping, or resting, besides Phil. His jacket was tucked under Dan’s neck, Dan’s feet in his lap. They were playing Muse on the radio. There was the ghost of a sunflower scrawled on the car window, Flowey, actually. Coffee mugs. Lopsided smiles.

From the front seat, a boy leant back, a boy with curling brown hair, dark but not as dark as Dan’s and vibrant green eyes. PJ. He looked to Phil then gave Dan a small shake. Dan grumbled before letting his eyes slide open. He coughed, spluttered and leapt up as if waking from a nightmare. Phil supposed in a way he had, but that was the thing about nightmares. They always ended.

“This would be your stop,” He smirked at the both of them, faking the tip of an imaginary hat before leaning over and opening the back door for the two boys.

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but I really hope I’m not going to be seeing you two again anytime soon, at least when we do I hope it is in different circumstances.”

"Don't worry, no charge," PJ added giving them just enough time to gather themselves and exit the cab before it was pulling away from the kerb and plunging out into the blackened streets of London.

"We have a strange taste in friends," Phil commented, hand shoved deep in his pockets shivering in the night air. His jacket was curled around Dan's shoulders. He didn't mind.

The two boys made their way upstairs for the second time in relative silence. Both knew they would have to talk about what was going on between them, but it appeared that neither wanted to make the first move. Dan was left shrinking into Phil’s jacket once they reached their front door. Phil found the spare keys in a plant by the door, unlocking it and letting the two of them into the apartment. It was cold, colder than either boy had remembered it being the first time.

Phil closed the door behind them then looked down at his hands, focusing on them intently before taking a deep breath and making a move. He had been planning some kind of speech, something eloquent, but that had all failed in the moment. His mind drawing a blank. He wasn’t sure if his mouth could make noise, so he just reached out, gripping his jacket, draped around the younger boy’s shoulders and pulled them closer before pausing.

Dan was wide-eyed. Unaware of exactly what was happening he found himself losing the ability to speak or move or think. He was a gelatinous mass of emotional turmoil, quivering where he stood.

“Did you mean it?” Phil asked quietly, trying to get Dan to meet his eyes. The other boy wouldn’t cooperate. Dan wasn’t speaking.

Phil had spent all his life, or at least all of the large chunk of it, he had spent with Dan waiting, hoping. Waiting for him to understand the way he felt. Hoping that one day he would catch on. The one opportunity he had at sharing that knowledge he had been too shocked to even act.

“I know you remember what I’m talking about,” He carried on. Dan’s face set, turning to stone, eyes still set on the floor. 

“Did you mean it?” Dan asked back, his voice coming out a fractured whisper.

“Mean what?”

Dan wouldn’t look at him. He just wanted the younger boy to look at him. If only he would look up Phil was sure he would be able to see it, in his eyes, on his face. There was nothing but love in his features. He just needed to look, though Phil was almost sure it had always been like that. He was always begging Dan to look closer while Dan would be praying he didn’t.

“That you didn’t want- you know… an ‘us’. I understand if you don’t- though there is kind of a universe rooting for us to get together. Like- there is this kid and he’s-” Phil interrupted before Dan could finish speaking.

“I never meant that. I never said that. I just… you were drunk and I have morals. I didn’t want you to regret it in the morning. I didn’t want to make things weird between us,”

Dan finally looked up, a slight surprised spreading over his face.

“I’ve always liked you… you spork.”

At this, he managed to make Dan chuckle. It wasn’t his normal laugh, it sounded more like a fractured gasp, a dry and half humoured cackle. His face, however, showed confusion before finally that melted away into understanding.

“You are always so sure of yourself- you know that? You always like what you like and feel what you feel so unapologetically. You dress like a bloody crayon box, rattle off weird facts, like shitty overpriced coffee, and you never apologise because no one can tell you how to be or how to feel. That’s one of the biggest things I admire about you. So, if you are always so sure of everything- why couldn’t you just take the fucking time to tell me you were sure about me?”

Dan’s shoulders were shaking by the time he finished, his last words coming out in a slur of frustrated gasps. Both boys had been trying to do what they thought was best for the other and in turn, they had been utterly tearing themselves apart.

“Because- you know I’m closed off. You know I don’t express myself well and that I’m fucking slow to catch on to everything, even when it comes to myself. I always liked you too. It just took me so fucking long to figure it out because I was fighting against myself and by the time I realised what I wanted it felt like it was too damn late but I put myself out there and then you just-”

Phil kissed him.

The action seemed to surprise the both of them. He just wanted Dan to stop talking, stop worrying, stop over analysing. Stop overthinking for once. He wanted to make things abundantly clear this time.

For the first time in the history of Dan Howell’s life, his brain went completely silent. It was as though Phil’s body was so charged with electricity that it had short circuited the entirety of his being. The world was a haze. He had kissed the other versions of Phil but this- holy hell this was his body on fire and his heart flying and falling. This was every good thing in the world wrapped into a sensation of complete and utter bliss.

They were kissing for eternities, across time and space. It felt as though in all versions of infinity they were kissing and the world was suddenly wide and open and infinite with possibility.

When time finally started ticking again, and the kiss came to an end both boys still clung to one another, losing count of limbs. Mine and yours seemed like an abstract concept too big for either to fathom at that moment in time. They were together, shakily breathing and being. All the stars had finally aligned and everything made sense.

There was something in the air, they both could feel it reshaping. It was as though the world around them was breaking apart and forming anew. It was as though all universes were stitching themselves back together and this one, finally was whole.

"I'm sure of you," Phil's voice ghosted warm through the inches between them.

"I'm sure of you," Dan answered back, the words holding all the certainty his body could muster.

It was the ending of a very strange experience and the opening of a hundred new doors.

When the time came for them to separate it was as though they knew, that from that day forward they would no longer be the anomaly of themselves in the infinity of possible outcomes.

In all worlds, in all infinities, they were together.         


	10. Epilogue

In opening the door to a new relationship neither boy had quite expected all the possibilities that would form from this. Dan had thought he and Phil had gone through every possible ‘first’ in their lifetime together. First time talking, first meeting, first time leaving home, first time moving in with someone, first YouTube video and the list went on, for what seemed like forever. Surely they had run out of firsts but with the rising of the sun on the first day after their whirlwind of an adventure, (which neither were totally convinced had even happened) there were so many new firsts ahead. Suddenly the world felt impossibly wide.

**The First Day**

They had slept on the sofa the night before, almost an impossibility for the two six-foot-something boys but their beds had felt so far away and neither wished to go to their own respected rooms. They just wanted time together. All that said, both Dan and Phil felt as though things on that day should have shifted by some grandiose magnitude, but they hadn’t.

Phil had woken up first, stretching his frame, hearing it creak, there was a kink in his neck, something he knew he was going to have to deal with for the rest of the day. He didn’t mind. Silver lining: he was with Dan. Dan was alive and okay, nothing was going to change that. He made a mental note that neither of them would be leaving the flat that day, just in case fate felt like pulling a Final Destination-esk twist to their perfect first day.

By the time Dan finally woke Phil had made them coffee and his own attempt at breakfast, which consisted of slightly outdated cereal and heated muffins they had left over from the bakery down the road. It wasn’t exactly the breakfast of champions but Dan still smiled never the less, sitting up sleepily, grumbling out something along the lines of,

“Stupid mother fucking small people furniture,” before catching Phil’s eye and managing a small smile.

“Morning,” Phil had uttered settling down beside him again on the sofa, offering up the half-arsed attempt at breakfast and coffee. Dan was still smiling.

His hair was a messy halo of brown curls and Phil had the overwhelming urge to brush the curls from his face. For once he didn’t have to stop himself. Dan leant into his hand with a sleepy smile. Nothing had changed, not really. He had almost expected them to be two different people when they woke up compared to the day before but they weren’t they were the same, still themselves. Maybe they were more themselves. That was the only change. Neither had to stop themselves. It was suddenly easy.

“Did you get me a mother fucking pistachio muffin? Phil Lester, I could fucking hug you.” Phil smirked and raised a brow slightly, tilting his head to the one side, like a curious puppy.

“You could,” He countered and Dan did.                       

That’s what it was. They were more themselves, Phil was sure of it.

The rest of the morning was spent on the sofa, mostly playing video games, scrolling through internet videos and watching anime. The only difference was that they held hands while they watched shows. When they played video games and Phil managed to say something at the inopportune time causing Dan to die in some horribly gruesome fashion, Dan would curse up a storm, as usual, but then he did something different. He would finish the level, lean over, place a quick peck on Phil’s cheek and simply say,

“I didn’t mean it,” And that was new.

That was their first day as something new.

**‘Coming Out’**

It was about two weeks since the day neither boy was sure had ever truly happened that they knew there was a conversation they needed to have. For once it wasn’t between them.

What sparked the revelation was Phil’s mother calling up, trying to arrange another family get together, sorting out opportune times with the older boy, what would work around his semi-regular videoing schedule and dates for various conventions.

Dan was sprawled out on the sofa, flicking through his phone laughing at something morbid, yet slightly funny. His feet were in Phil’s lap. It was like the night neither boy was really sure had happened.

“Actually-”

Phil had interrupted his mother from her long and rambling train of thought which Phil had only half been paying attention to. It was something to do with what distant friend of an uncle, or cousin they would have to get together with when they went to Florida. She was also saying how his brother’s girlfriend was joining their vacation for the second year in a row.

“I was wondering if we had room for an extra this year.”

This seemed to catch Dan’s attention as he sat up slightly, tilting his head to one side, in that moment they managed to have a conversation using only their eyes, Phil supposed it was the upside of having known someone for a very long amount of time. Their minds just clicked.

‘Who’s that?’ Dan’s eyes seemed to ask

‘Mum,’ Phil mouthed

Dan tilted his head, translating to ‘what are you talking about?’

Phil rolled his eyes, the family holiday seemed to take up most of his and his mother’s conversations at this time of the year.

“And you want me to come?” Dan uttered, just loud enough for Phil to hear. He smiled and nodded.

“If you want to,” He added hastily.

“I want to.”

Phil nodded in acknowledgement and turned his attention back to his mother on the phone, his hands still absentmindedly swaying Dan’s legs in his lap.

“There’s always room for one more, do you and Dan have something on around that time?”

It was a good sign that his mother instantly assumed the plus one would be Dan. He told his mother most things, and there was no one he talked to her more about than Dan. She had grown fond of him over the years often saying he was like a son to her. Phil supposed now was as good a time as any.

“I think we might, but I was more asking because I wanted him to come.”

Dan sat up entirely at this and moved slightly closer to Phil as if understanding that something was going on that he should be a part of. He pulled his legs from Phil's lap trying to hear the conversation. Phil rolled his eyes and placed it on speaker.

“Well Dan is always welcome, you know that. I always think of him as my youngest son anyway. He’s always attached to your hip,” She gave a good-natured chuckle and Phil could tell without seeing that she was shaking her head.

Phil looked to Dan, silently asking if it was okay to tell her. Dan shrugged. They hadn’t really talked about telling people, things still felt fresh. Telling people might jinx things but if there were any time to tell anyone, this would be it. Maybe telling his mother over the phone would take some of the sting away, if the situation were to be received badly. Dan, however, couldn’t imagine it being the case. Phil’s family had always been an almost ethereally warm and present force within the both of their lives, anything else seemed to betray their nature.

“That’s the thing,” Phil’s voice had the slightly mild presence of discomfort as if the words at the tip of his tongue were fish on land, wriggling and floundering.

“I would like to bring him in the same way Martyn wants to bring his girlfriend.”

There is a moment of pause on the other line. Phil was looking at Dan while Dan tried as best he could to be assuring. He felt in over his head, as he had never expected to have to endure such conversations but it looked as though he would. He was still awestruck at the mere concept of him and the other boy being together. It still felt like a dream. Dan rested his hand on the other boy’s knee and silently hoped that was enough.

“Oh, love,” A voice on the other end of the line soothed after a moment of palpable silence. His mother’s voice was equal parts calm as it was reassuring. Both boys let out a breath.

“Well, then he is very welcome to come. Is he there? Give him my best, yeah? It’s been far too long since I’ve seen the both of you,” She didn’t sound as surprised about this confession as Phil had thought she would.

“You aren’t even a little surprised?” Phil couldn’t help but ask, causing Dan to stifle a laugh and sink back down into his new browsing position, lengthways on the sofa, phone in hand, legs in Phil’s lap.

“Not particularly, the timing is always a surprise but I thought it was something that would happen one day. Mother’s intuition I suppose.”

Phil just made a small sound of agreement. It was almost as easy as talking about the weather and easier by far than having a conversation about what placed they should stop at while they were on their family holiday. He was lucky. He knew that. In that moment, he felt honestly so damn lucky.

His father, at hearing the news over a month later while Phil’s family had dropped by for a surprise visit had been just as cool and receptive to the idea. Phil supposed they both had time to mull this information over in the several years he and Dan lived together. They both acted almost as if it were common knowledge.

When they had told Dan’s mother she had been surprised. It wasn’t as though she had reacted badly, it was more like the reaction one would get when they walked in on a surprise party. At first, she had been stunned into silence, had taken several moments to collect herself, then after what felt like several decades, she had smiled.

“I’m happy if you’re happy.”

That was the one thing she had said to him that day that had shone through his haze of anxiety. He had told her he was happy, elated even and so, she was the same. His father wasn’t like Dan’s mother. There was no crying or hugging. He had just rested his hand square in the middle of the boy’s back, Dan supposed this was meant to be soothing. His father wasn’t cold but he had never been affectionate. This was about as emotionally invested as he got.

“I used to worry about you when you were younger. Did you know that?” His father had said after Dan told him. Dan was unsure how to react so he told the truth.

“I didn’t know that,” He confessed in a whisper.

“I was, you were a good kid but you weren’t ever very happy. I couldn’t understand you, I tried but we are both very different.”

Dan and his father never really had heart to heart conversations. Whenever either would try there was just no connection. His father would try and get him involved in the things that he liked, sports, hardware and building bloody Ikea furniture, for fun. Dan just couldn’t connect, and his music was always too loud and favourite films to gore-ridden or strange for his father’s liking. It wasn’t that they didn’t try. They just couldn’t click.

“Then you started to talk to Phil and at first I was even more worried because it isn’t typical for a parent to be happy about their son talking to strangers online, but I agreed to let you go meet him because for the first time you seemed happy. I felt like I didn’t have to worry anymore because you had found your place all on your own. I might never understand you, but I’m glad someone does. In whatever way, I’m happy.”

Dan had thought he would be the one to cry in that moment, but he reminded himself to stay somewhat in control. He simply gave a slightly watery smile and a nod of his head.

Telling their friends had been much simpler. There was no pressure placed upon them, no expectations. Their confessions were answered with kind smiles and congratulations. It was then that both boys seemed to realise that no one was surprised, not even those they hadn’t seen in years.

“Several people were taking bets on how long it would take for you two to catch on,” PJ had told Dan once while the boy was over, this time for casual conversation and video games. It was nowhere near as important or pressing as saving the fate of their other selves but it was far nicer just to catch up without the world on their backs.

“I won,” PJ announced with a smug grin.

“I think that would be called cheating,” Dan shot back causing the other boy to smirk.

“It’s only cheating if I get caught.”

**The First Time**

Dan and Phil had gotten into the habit of sharing a bed, whether it was in Dan’s or Phil’s room depended on the night. It was normal couple behaviour, though it wasn’t far off what they had been doing before. Phil had always thought it was nice to have Dan beside him, particularly on the cold nights. On those nights he would radiate heat, comfort would come from the mere presence of him. Phil always felt an acute sense of belonging when curled beside Dan’s sleeping frame.

Dan would complain about Phil’s cold feet or his habitual routine of rolling out of bed at ungodly hours for a ‘midnight’ snack but at the end of the day, he too had fallen in love with their new sleeping arrangement. It was particularly good when either boy couldn’t sleep, they would watch films until the sun would greet the sky again before sleep would take hold of them, but tonight there was slightly more than sleep on Dan’s mind.

They had been watching an anime. Dan had grown too tired to be bothered reading the subtitles so he mindlessly rested his head on Phil’s shoulder, burying his face into the crook of the boy’s neck. Dan fucking hated it when anyone would touch him the way he was touching Phil in that moment. It would make his skin crawl, that’s why it had surprised him so much when he had stumbled upon this position several days prior and found the older boy to be quite receptive to it. He felt gooseflesh erupt over the other boy’s skin as Dan’s breath burned hot into his skin.

“What are you doing?” Phil asked, pushing his glasses up slightly.

Phil never liked the concept of falling asleep with his contacts in. He had spoken to Dan at length of his fear of having to remove them after falling asleep in them and finding them suction cupped to his eyeball. Dan was pretty sure that couldn’t happen but he let Phil entertain the idea.

“Nothing,” Dan’s voice came out in a sleepy slur.

He heard Phil let out an exasperated exhale right before Dan found a hand mindlessly combing through his hair. That was something Phil had discovered Dan liked. Dan hadn’t even known until it had first happened while they were lazing about on the sofa. He now found himself letting out a quiet noise of content.

“I hate to admit I kind of like that,” Dan mumbled causing the other boy to smirk.

“I know you do,”

Then they were kissing like they had done dozens of times before in the small time they had been together. Kissing harder still, feverish with it. Their touches were a drug and they had both become addicted. Kisses were novocaine. They numbed over time, so their hands got rougher. This had happened once, maybe twice in their time together.

This time it didn’t feel like enough. Everything was too hot, the sheets too clingy, clothes too thick, heads to foggy. They stripped them off one item at a time. The sheets, the clothes. They were now as naked as the day they were born, pale and fleshy. Perfectly imperfect heaps of flesh and bone.

“So, we’re doing this,” Dan gasped out in a moment of clarity. Phil was kissing his collar bone.

He looked up, sweat on his brow, head tilted, cheeks flushed. His eyes whispered the same revelation.

“We’re doing this,” His voice shook and he let out a nervous laugh.

“I mean… if you want to do this. We can not do this too. If you want to. I mean… If you don’t want to… Want to not,” Phil floundered.

“I want to,” Dan agreed quickly adding,

“If you want to.”

Phil gave a dopy nod, both boys seemed to be in over their heads but neither were scared. They had each other to walk through it. Dan was feeling more heat rise in his face the longer they looked at one another. He was now hyper-aware of everything. He realised that he wasn’t a magazine model or a porn star. He wasn’t a perfectly Photoshopped Adonis. He didn’t have abs, he had freckles, scars, insecurities, and imperfections. Phil instantly read the panic in his eyes. It was fine. He always knew what to say.

“I never knew you had a birthmark on your left butt cheek.”

Dan went red all over. He buried his face in Phil’s hair trying to stifle a laugh his whole frame shaking as he chuckled off the uttered embarrassment boiling and bubbling in his veins.

“I-” He gasped between laughs but failed to summon up much more, Phil was laughing now too.

“I heard that a birthmark is where you died in your last life… I would have really liked to see the story behind that universe,” Phil added laughing so roughly that all sound cut out, he was just shaking and gasping for air like a floundering fish.

“Hey, you have one on the inside of your right thigh what the fuck is the story behind that then?” Dan finally found his voice again.

“Maybe it was a very wild night out for the both of us?” Phil attempted.

After taking several long moments to pull themselves together they were back to kissing and fumbling. There was no real rule book to this, no step by step for them but that was okay, they were working it out. Phil was straddling the younger boy when suddenly he turned pink, knowing he was going to have to ask another slightly awkward question.

“Do you want me too…” His voice trailed off.

“Be the one who… or do you want to… I mean I would prefer to…” Dan chuckled at that, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, for Christ sakes, you can fuck me.” Phil blushed harder.

“I was getting there,” he admitted shyly.   

And they did get there. Eventually.

**Engagement**

It wasn’t planned. It was just a spare of the moment thing. It was early too, all things considered. It was almost a year since that day, the strange and twisting day, which both boys were even more unsure of with the passing of time. Phil’s brother and his partner were getting married, Phil had found out and had told Dan while they cradled bowls of cereal in their laps while watching anime, typical morning.

“When are we going to get married?” Dan had commented offhandedly, it had been a thought, nothing meant from it but suddenly the pressing question hovered over both of their heads.

Phil went to the extent to pause the TV as well as turn to face Dan. It wasn’t often that Phil looked like this, serious, wholeheartedly so. Dan instantly felt as though he said something wrong but moments before he could retract into himself Phil quickly spoke,

“Do you want to- get married?”

Dan cleared his throat, looking down at his soggy cereal, no longer feeling hungry. He set the bowl to the side and moved to face the other boy as well, a furrow forming on his brow a blush spilling into his cheeks. He wasn’t sure he would ever get used to this feeling.

“I mean- yeah. Eventually, that would be… cool.”

Phil’s face instantly lightened, the seriousness seemed to fade away and was momentarily replaced with excitement. He looked like a little kid on Christmas morning and suddenly Dan felt his own body mirroring the emotion.

“Then we should get married- eventually. If you would like to- get married that is… to me?”

Dan felt a smile threaten to break his face in two. He tried to bite the inside of his cheek to cover it, but it didn’t work. He was beaming.

“Is this you asking?” Dan questioned his voice instantly raising an octave. Phil instantly looked just as flushed and flustered as Dan felt.

“I mean… I wasn’t planning on it. So, I don’t have anything ready or anything to give or- I definitely would have thought of a better way to ask you if I was planning. But you asked and it just came up so I thought maybe, if you wanted to, at some point… marry me?” Phil stuttered out in a mess of nerves his cereal bowl now also abandoned Dan’s eyes swelled wide.

“So, you are asking?” Dan reiterated, needed to make sure.

“Yes. I’m asking you to marry me and you aren’t answering right away like I hoped you would so now I’m nervous and I’m talking a lot, which never happens. Did you know apparently I talk a lot when I’m really nervous… like I’m doing now-”

Dan didn’t give him time to finish. He plunged forward to tackle the older boy, pulling him into a tight hug, trying his best to remain composed but he may or may not have cried… just a little.

“Yes, you fucking idiot I’ll marry you.”

And they did get married, ironically enough in Vegas. Dan had thought it would be funny. He liked to do all things in life ironically, he wouldn’t stop with his wedding. There was a handful of family and friends there and a wedding vlog they would have to put up… the second they came out to the world. That, after the honeymoon in Japan, was the obvious next step in their string of firsts. People suspected, they always had but now more, than ever with the way they had been acting and now neither boy was scared of the impermanence of their situation. Neither was worried that if things went south they would have to split their viewers like children, having them pick sides, having them watch their relationship flourish only to go up in flames.

They knew this was forever. There was no possibility of it being anything else in any other universe. This was it.

**Coming Out (Again)**

They uploaded the video at four in the morning, the particular reason for such an obscure hour had more to do with the worry and less to do with any YouTube practicality algorithm. After doing it they both vowed to go to sleep, to not look at it, not talk about it. Both hoped and expected the best, after all, it was the viewers that had been more hyperaware of their emotions than either boy had been but there was always doubt.

“I never imagined we would get to this part,” Dan had whispered, half to the darkness, half to Phil.

He said it to say something. The room felt too quiet. He supposed that was meant to happen when you were trying to sleep, but he knew full well neither of them would.

“Me neither, it always seemed like a million miles away.”

Dan couldn’t see him in the dark but he could tell Phil’s eyes were open. It was this unspoken connection, the tethered string between the two lads, shaking with feedback. He could feel Phil tense at his side. It was an odd occurrence for Phil to be nervous.

“Everything will be okay,” Dan uttered to the air, trying to be the one who knew what to say.

“I know it will and if it isn’t… we still have one another, right?” Phil still managed to take that role.

“I did marry you, leaving you now would be a little counterproductive, even if it was for the views,” Dan fell back to being the pessimistic and slightly sarcastic one.  It’s what he did best.

“So, you did marry me for the money?” Phil teased half-heartedly, at Dan’s side he felt the boy begin to relax.

“Absolutely, I married you for your money and the fate of the universe, not because I might actually fucking like you.”

“God forbid,” Phil chuckled and shook his head rolling over to face Dan.

He could feel the older boy’s breath on the nape of his neck and found his own body beginning to loosen.

“This is fucking stupid, everyone has thought we were together for years. They are going to be happy for us and fuck the ones who aren’t, right?”

“Right, screw them,” Phil chuckled earning a half-hearted groan from Dan.

“You know, in your old age you have gotten way too fucking PG, just say fuck them. It might just be cathartic,” It was Phil’s turn to groan.

He rolled on top of the younger boy, gently holding Dan’s hands down.

“You are so… frustrating,” Phil grumbled, a smile toyed at Dan’s lips and he rolled the boy off of him.

“So fucking frustrating?” He questioned, voice rising an octave, causing the other boy to cackle.

“You are so _fucking_ frustrating,” Phil gave in causing the younger boy to shoot him a dimpled, Cheshire cat grin. He wasn’t sure if Phil could see it in the darkness but it didn’t matter.

It would be okay, it always was, in every world.

**Finding Something Missing**

It wasn’t often you would wake up with a feeling like Phil had, a sudden sensation of knowing. Dan was asleep beside him one hand tucked behind his head, the other buried in the fur of a puppy, his mouth agape, drooling slightly. Phil smiled at the sight. There were some sights he would never get used to or tire of, this was one of those.

He and Dan were still going strong, with both their relationship and careers. YouTube was their top priority but they had been branching out, they had a few scripts for other projects lying about their flat both toying with the idea of more.  He was still trying to wear Dan down about the two of them doing a couple’s tag video. He thought it would be cute. Not everything they made had to be well thought out, and highly cognitively stimulating. They could just do a fun video.

“That’s what the gaming channel is for. Plus, a couple’s tag would cause a mass surge of people projective vomiting over their computer screens,” Dan had countered the first time Phil asked. The last time he asked Dan had simply groaned and uttered,

“Later,” Which was how Phil knew he had won.

There was still something missing though. It wasn’t with their jobs, nor was it with them but there was something, they both had adopted a dog a few months prior (having finally moved into a flat that allowed pets) but there was still something missing.

He woke up that morning knowing.

Phil rolled out of bed, attempting to be silent. He made his way out onto their balcony, grabbing his phone on the way and calling PJ, hoping that by some off chance he had also awoken early.

“Hello?” A slightly sleepy PJ picked up on the third ring.

“Hey PJ, it’s Phil,” He could hear a ruffling (most likely sheets) and a dry chuckle.

“For someone who works in technology, you know jack shit about technology. Caller I.D. has been a thing for a decade or so now- anyway, what is it?”

“How are Dan and I?” It was a broad question but he wasn’t sure how to elaborate.

“I don’t know, I think you would have to ask either yourself or Dan that one,” PJ’s voice came out dripping in sarcasm.

Phil groaned, knowing PJ wasn’t going to make things easy for him. He moved to look out at early morning London. An idea itched at the back of his brain. He couldn’t quite scratch it.

“I mean in other worlds, how are Dan and I?” PJ made a sound of understanding.

“Peachy keen, loved up and all that. The universe is content, your fuck up seems pretty fixed, why?”

Phil’s eyes trailed to the park a few blocks down from their flat, it was small but big enough to walk the dog and even had a small playground. It was then he understood, things clicking together. Dan had turned twenty-seven a few months ago, Phil was already in his thirties. They didn’t exactly have time to waste and he knew then what he wanted.

“How’s James?” Phil asked, speaking a name neither he nor Dan had spoken of in a long while. PJ too seemed to catch on.

“He’s doing really well. Since we fixed things, he grew up with the both of you, which means he’s as okay as a kid you and Dan have raised can be,” Phil chuckled faintly at that.

“Thanks,” He managed, realising that the older he grew, the more of Dan’s sarcasm he picked up on.

“I think that’s all I wanted to ask,” He managed after a moment, turning back to look into the house. Dan was still asleep in their bed. Phil had another sudden jolt of remembrance.

“Wait, do you think… Is James somewhere in this world too?” He felt stupid for asking.

“I don’t see why not, everyone else seems to be so I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.” Phil just hummed, before uttering a goodbye to his friend, thanking him.

He slowly made his way back to the bedroom, crawling back into bed, spending what seemed like an eternity watching the roof. He wanted to talk to Dan but also wanted to let him sleep. At the slightest sign of Dan waking, his lashes fluttering, Phil perked up, sitting up in bed shaking Dan the rest of the way into consciousness, also managing to rouse the puppy.

“Do you want to have kids?” He questioned overenthusiastically.

Dan’s eyes flew open then, looking Phil over as if to check he was being serious. Apparently yes. Dan sat up them too, scrubbing his eyes almost violently as if he could speed up his own mind, catch it up to the waking world.

“You did this a few months ago with the fucking dog,” His voice was slightly hoarse from sleep.

“Yeah, but you wanted a dog too. It’s not like I forced you to get a dog.”

“My point  exactly,” Dan breathed looking to Phil then, both of them gave each other a once over.

“Does that mean you do?” A smile near split Phil’s face in two just at the thought.

“I’m saying that I’m up for a proper adult conversation about it after I have time to fucking wake up and make sure it isn’t just a random thing you think you want. It’s a kid not a weird piece of IKEA furniture, you can’t just decide you don’t want it a few days after having it.”

Phil felt like he was being lectured, though he wasn’t sure he minded since he knew, he was settled on the idea.

“It’s not a whim,” He confirmed.

And it wasn’t.

**One Last First**

“Remind me again why we’re painting the room blue?”

Dan had asked for about the seventh time that day. He and Phil had taken the liberties of attempting to renovate their spare bedroom into a nursery, all things considered, it was going surprisingly well. Maybe they could have their own shitty renovation show, after all, he might have to add it to the maybe pile of concepts for if their careers as YouTubers goes up in flames. He can’t imagine pumping out a video every few weeks with a kid, with James to look after- not with him being so young.

After talking to almost all adoption agencies in England (or so it seemed) they had found him. Dan couldn’t be sure, but Phil had been. Dan wasn't exactly sure how Phil knew but he had said he did with such certainty, it was hard for Dan to argue.

“James’ favourite colour is blue,” Phil uttered simply, trying and failing not to get blue paint on their new carpet.

“The six-month-old told you all that?”

They had visited him. He was in a foster home up near where Dan had grown up. It was a trip down memory lane for him in the strangest of manners. He hadn’t been home for so long, and the next time he would go there he would go there a father. It seemed strange as all fuck. Thinking it over now he came to realise that it was only weeks before they would finalise all the adoption papers and James would be here, just in time for his twenty-eighth birthday.

He wouldn’t exactly say he felt ready, but the general consensus from his numerous friends who were parents was that this feeling was normal. No one ever really felt ready, but they did feel like it was time. Dan felt like it was time. Phil seemed to feel the same.

“No a three-year-old from an alternate universe told me that,” Phil cleared up as if it were something as normal as saying he went down to the bloody grocery store.

Dan’s perpetual silver lining would always be Phil Lester. He wasn’t sure why it had taken him so long to realise this. Things were changing, their world was shaping around them in a totally different way, their roles were changing but they had been through worse.

If Dan could handle tumbling through a string of other worlds anything else would be a simple bump in the road. Phil was his best friend, their titles may have changed but that still stayed the same. Boyfriend, fiancé, husband, whatever. He would always be his best friend. If he had his best friend they could do anything.

“Well remind me again why we are painting it not some professionals,” Dan countered standing back to look at the wall.

His cheeks were caked in sky blue and he was unsure as to how they got that way. Phil’s arms from the elbow down were splattered with it. They were both a fucking mess.

“This feels more heartfelt,” Phil offered.

“It looks more fucking like we got James to finger paint the bloody wall for us.”

Phil shot Dan a sideways glance before bursting out laughing.

“It has charm.”

“In a fucked up kind of way.”

They both were silent, looking at the sky blue scene, blotchy and darker in some places than in others.

“It looks like the universe, big and blue and infinite.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, everyone, for being very patient with me uploading this last chapter and most of all for everyone who has made it this far. I really hope you have enjoyed it. Again, another thank you for everyone leaving all your kudos and comments I can't express how much it means to me. Anyway, thanks for coming on this wild ride with me, I'm hoping to write more for you soon.


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